


So I Ran Away With the Circus

by Paperback_Writer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Circus stuck! Au, John is Ace, M/M, idk based off an RP I had once, loads of people have mental disorders, post-sburb but pretty much nobody knows that, there might be some angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-06 20:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paperback_Writer/pseuds/Paperback_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave's life isn't too fantastic. Dave's impulse control is also worse than a six year old's. So when a circus rolls into town, the obvious thing to do is hitch a ride. Besides, what's the worst that could possibly happen?</p><p> </p><p>(EDIT: ABANDONED ;__;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

Leaving was the easiest thing you ever did. 

Living as an orphan with a generally neglectful elder brother was pretty much the shittiest combination in the world. Add that to undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD, all your teachers hating you, and a general disconnect from people, and you had a difficult life full of difficult people. 

It’s hard, growing up. It’s hard and nobody understands. 

You got mixed up in some mild shit. Not heavy bad, just white-suburban level badassery. Not enough to land you in trouble with whatever meager police force the city had, just enough to earn you shifty side-glances from old ladies with their wheely-baskets of shopping. In fairness, you probably looked a little intimidating. The dyslexia made you hate anything with lots of reading and or writing, and the ADHD gave you the impulse control of a two year old. As a result, gym was the only class you were any good at (you became tall and muscular pretty quickly), and you were covered in tattoos and piercing. Sleeve tattoos, quotes, you had a couple little penises on your chest that were masked by larger, more intricate tattoos. You had about thirteen piercing and counting, marked by the barbell through your eyebrow, the ring in your nose, the little lip stud in your thin bottom lip, and ten earrings on the one ear. You made a satisfying jingly noise when you walked, a constant source of amusement. 

One day, a shady-ass, crumby, run-down circus came to town. You couldn’t help it. Imagine the irony, the beautiful irony of you, an entitled white boy with no real marketable skills running away to join the circus. It was perfect. So, after they packed up, you managed to sneak onto the truck and there. You’d run away with the circus. Incredible. 

Problem was, the circus wasn’t exactly hiring lame white kids. Everyone else could legitimately be considered an outcast, and you were just some punk with poor impulse control who managed to catch a ride. When they found you, there wasn’t a huge explosion of anger, like you’d expected. It was a general, sustained build up. This was somehow much, MUCH worse. You sat there, listening to the carnies debate whether or not to chuck your body in a lake. One of them calmly pointed out that that was murder, and the Carnival was already illegal enough. They weren’t about to exert the energy to take you back, and decided that you were pretty enough to be an act. Fucking score. 

One of the carnies, a little polynesian woman named Aradia who spoke very sparingly, took you under her wing. And by that, she taught you fire dancing through a lot of yelling when you did the wrong thing, and a lack of yelling when you did the right thing. It was surprisingly helpful, her bluntness. “Weak arms” was a lot easier to pay attention to than “your foot work and rhythm was really good, but your arms were a bit saggy. Try making them stronger, it’ll feel different.” You picked it up surprisingly quickly, and from Aradia’s mildly pleased nodding you assumed you looked good. 

You were thrown into the run of things, and that was your life. Wake up, choke down some game-y borsch that the Lion tamer (oh yeah. They had a lion. You often wondered how they’d avoided that lawsuit) had cooked up. Sit on the fringe of a conversation, pay half attention to whatever they were saying. Set up shop, help advertise the show. Show starts, on after the blind girl threw knives at the freak on a spinning wheel, and before the paralyzed trapeze artist. Pack up, spread out the bedroll, gather around the trash fire whilst the muslim girl who did the magic show read from a battered anthology of H.P Lovecraft. The best part: nobody hated you. You were fairly tame by the circus standards, the fortuneteller, Kanaya, claimed to be a defector from North Korea, miraculously escaping a concentration camp. You’re not sure you believed her. And there was the vietnamese guy, the ‘Freak’ with honest-to-god horns, fur and a tail. Weird. You thought about looking up the science behind all that, but knew you wouldn’t. 

The thing was run by a chain-smoking guy called Jack Noir. His voice was like sandpaper and he got a good deal of the profits and locked them away in a big ass metal crate. Some of it he spent on food, some on fueling the several gargantuan trucks it takes to move all the shit safely. He spoke very little, choosing either to shout or smoke his approval or disapproval. You got the sense that nobody liked him much, especially from the jokes they told. What was that one about the correlation between the number of cigarettes smoked in a day to the size of ones cock? Or that one about the 1930s private eye who got lost on the way to work and ended up in 2015? Fuck, there was one with the punchline in Vietnamese, which doesn’t translate too well. Ah well, the point was, he was an asshole, and nobody liked him.

 The Russian strong man tried to teach you to drive once, but everything about the endless straight road was boring to you. You were JUST about to drive into a ditch, just for the hell of it, when he took the wheel back. 

“When I was your age,” the muslim girl with the affinity for magic would tell you later, “the prospect of driving was the most exciting, interesting and enjoyable thing about my life. I think it was probably the sense of freedom it gave me; a further independence from my mother.”   
“I ran away with the circus, Lalonde,” you’d replied, “I’m not sure my poor white body would be able to handle any more freedom”

Your life was not normal, but it fell into an easy rhythm, a rhythm that beat your old life’s rhythm by ten-fold. 

You didn’t expect a little janitor boy to interrupt it. 

 


	2. Ode to the Phantom Janitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave meets John. John meets Dave. Simple enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ones a little longer, right?

You’re not entirely sure when it was you started noticing him. Or even when he showed up. You were introduced to everyone when you’d joined, and you were 99% sure the random sweeper-guy was not one of the ‘original crew’. You’re not even too sure when he turned up. 

You caught him hanging on the fringes of the ring, watching whatever was going with those big pale eyes, magnified by the comically large glasses. He’d lean on the massive broom, looking for all the world like one of the kids in the audience. He held his breath when the audience did, laughed when they did, you’re pretty sure you caught him applauding at one point. It was like every day he saw the circus for the first time. And then he’d just duck out from under the big top tent and disappear into thin fucking air.

He didn’t eat with you. He waited until Nepeta had served everyone soup, then almost guiltily slunk up to the pot and poured himself a bowl. He sat in the dark, just awkwardly watching you. You decided to watch him back. You were determined to catch this mystery boy if it was the last fucking thing you ever did. He was gonna catch you watching him watching you, and then you were gonna go over and ask him why he was watching you watch him watch you, and then he was gonna spill the metaphorical beans.

“Strider,” Karkat’s cheese-grater voice interrupted your thoughts. 

“Yeah,” you said absently, still not turning back to the actual conversation. 

“I asked you a fucking question,” he spat, impatiently. 

“Yeah?” you replied, still watching the Janitor boy. He seemed more interested in the soup. There was a silence. 

“Do you have an answer to said question?” he asked, sweetly. 

“What was the question?” you asked airily (C’mon, kid, look up) 

“What the fuck is so interesting over there?” he asked, pointing to the shadows. At that, you had to turn back to him. 

“That kid. The sweeper guy. He’s just sitting over there in the dark on his own, like some sorta lone wolf, preying on all us guys who get to sit close to the fire. Kinda sad, actually, like a plot from a-” 

“Sweeper dude?” Karkat interrupted. 

“Yeah. Sweeper dude. As in the dude who sweeps up all your shit,” you reply, jerking your thumb at the shadows. 

“Don’t be an idiot,” Karkat said, scratching absently at one of his horns, “we don’t have a fucking maid. I’m not sure what your life was like, growing up in the American equivalent of a fucking palace, but some of us-”

“Aw, you’re just jealous cause your Dad fucked a lion and you popped out,” you said, smirking a little. You knew you’d struck a bit of a nerve there, but everyone picked on Karkat for being a freak. By now, it rolled right off his back.

“ _Lam ye mo ye!”_ he replied, throwing a fork at your head. You ducked. 

“Big words from a little tiny man,” you said. Terezi laughed her high pitched, rough, extremely annoying laugh. 

“It’s not that funny,” Karkat, scowled. 

“But you ARE a tiny little man!” Terezi said, pinching one of his cheeks. And by that, you mean she kind of smushed her hand into his cheek, and then grabbed whatever flesh she came into contact with with every single one of her fingers. Being blind, she was allowed this general margin for error. 

“I’m pinching his cheek, right?” she asked the group. 

“Yeah, you’ve got it,” the daredevil assured. There was a general murmur of agreement. The conversation drifted away from you again. When you looked back, the Janitor boy was gone. 

 

Damn.

 

~

 

You tried the ‘catch me catching you watching me watch you watch me’ strategy several times. You’d tried to talk to Rose about it, but she was straight up living in denial of the existence of the sweeper kid. 

“Dave, I promise you. There’s never been a sweeper in our circus, and you were the last person to join,” she would tell you millions of times. 

Maybe you were going insane. Maybe he was a ghost. Probably a mixture of the two. 

You tried to ignore him, but the more you tried, the less you could. You began to notice just about everything about him. The way he’d nudge the heavy glasses back up his nose with the back of his hand. The way his messy, dark hair bounced when he moved. The way his lips curled into a smile, stretching out over his ridiculous teeth. The way he’d cross his arms over the handle of the broom and lean his head on them, watching contently as Vriska jumped through eight flaming hoops after dosing herself with gasoline. You wanted to go up and talk to him, you did, but A) you weren’t entirely sure he was real and B) you didn’t really have a conversation starter. Conversations were never really your forte. 

As far as you knew, there were two strategies for dealing with conversations. The first one was ‘do all the talking’ and the second one was ‘find someone who will do all the talking’. The problem for both of those is that there were a hell of a lot of people who liked to do all the talking, and when two people who do all the talking try to do all the talking at the same time, the conversation sucks. You needed to find someone who would let you do all the talking, because the ADHD made it really tough for you to do all the listening. 

For a while, you decided that you were content to watch him watch your friends watch you watch him. Pretty soon, it began to drive you insane. There was so much you didn’t know about this kid, and you intended to find it all out. 

Trouble was, any time you were about to “make your move” as it were, something got in the way. The show had ended, and the audience was slowly filing out. On the other side of the ring stood the sweeper kid, getting ready to sweep the ring, you assumed. He caught you watching him, and smiled awkwardly. You nodded. He just stood there, obviously waiting for you to leave before he could do his thing. You took a deep breath, finally deciding to ford the ring, saunter right up to the kid. 'Hey my name’s Dave why the fuck have you been avoiding the rest of us'. Flawless plan. 

“Dave, Nepeta’s stuck up a tree. Get her down,” Terezi came out of fucking nowehere, obscuring your line of vision. 

“Later, okay?” you said, more than a little impatiently. Terezi paused, listening to the general commotion.

“Dave, Karkat tried to get Nepeta down from the tree and now HE’S stuck up there too,” she said. You turned to glance.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” you said, watching the general commotion.

“Dave, Aradia’s throwing rocks at them to help them to come down and it’s obviously not working. Please help,” Terezi said, tilting her head to try and target the exact sound coming from the tree. You watched for a little while. 

“I can see that,” you said, trying to see over her short little head. Where the fuck had the kid gone?

“Dave, Tavros managed to get up the tree along with the rest of them” Terezi sighed. 

“Oh for fucks sake,” you said, throwing your head back in exasperation. Terezi less-than-gently grabbed your wrist, dragging you away.

“C’mon, cool kid.”

You admitted defeat, resignedly following Terezi to the tree that had so far captured at least three of the circus. You ran a hand through your hair, realizing that you’d lost one of your earrings as the back of your hand brushed the empty top of your ear. 

“Shit, one sec TZ,” you said, jerking your wrist away, “lost an earring.” She made a face. 

“Can’t you just forget about it?” she asked, scowling a little. 

“That’s how you get an infection,” you said, backing off, “two secs.” 

You ducked back into the tent, easily finding the large silver ring amongst the orange-ish sand. You picked it up, dusting it off on your ratty shirt. You turned to leave, but were stopped short by a noise from the seats. You turned around slowly, sweeping your eyes over the creaky wooden stands. 

“‘Lo?” you called out. Fuck, if this was a horror movie, you’d be dead. There was a general silence, before your mystery, mousey haired janitor finally stood up, brushing the dust off himself. 

“Uh...Hi,” he said. Holy shit, his voice was high pitched. And nasally too, like he grew up in the suburbs _way_ north. 

“Sup,” you said, staring at him. There was a long awkward pause. 

“Can I ask you a question?” you asked finally. He mumbled something in response. 

“What?” 

“You just did,” he said, a grin beginning to spread over his pale face. You exhale heavily out of your nose, a smile beginning to tug at your lips. 

“Go ahead, ask the question,” he says finally. 

“Why’ve you been avoiding us?” you ask, tilting your head to the side. His cheeks turned the mildest shade of pink.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” he mumbled, in the exact tone of voice that implies ‘I’ve been avoiding you.’

“Sure,” you say, scoffing a little, “Also, why am I the only one who can see you?” He just shrugs. 

“Probably ‘cause you’re the only one paying attention,” he said, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. He picked up the broom again, going back to the apparently fascinating job of sweeping up. You went back to the surprisingly difficult task of putting the earring back in your ear without a mirror. 

“You a ghost?” you asked. He looked at you like you were an idiot.

“So, you got a name?” you ask after a little while. 

“John Egbert,” he said cheerily. 

“Not buying it,” you said dismissively, “nobody’s actually called John. It’s a myth.” The methodical sound of his sweeping stopped for a moment. He looked over at you, eyebrows raised until they were hidden behind his messy fringe. 

“What?” he asked, laughing a little.

“Y’know, like how Bob’s supposedly a super common name? How many ‘Bob’s do you know?” you said, still struggling to get the fucking ring in your ear. 

“Sorta the same you, right? I mean, Dave?” he laughed, going back to sweeping. Okay, weird. How the hell did he know your name? He saw the look on your face, and stopped, mimicking Kanaya’s ‘Ring Leader’ voice. 

“Please welcome to the stage, Fire dancers Dave Strider and Aradia Mediago!” 

“Ah.” 

“You’re really good, by the way,” he said, going back to sweeping, “where’d you pick it up?”

“Here, actually,” you said, dropping the freaking ring for the fiftieth time with a mild ‘God fucking damn it.’ He finished up, nimbly hopping his way over to you. 

“You want some help with that?” he asked, sitting down next to you. 

“Please. It’s fucking impossible without a mirror. Like you’re trying to open some sorta laminated packaging with trimmed nails, or eat with flippers for hands. D’you know how hard it is to use cutlery when all of your fingers are taped together? Fucking impossible. It’s-” you said, feeling yourself start to go off the rails, yet completely unable to stop yourself. 

“Just gimmie the earring,” he said, holding out his hand. 

“Okay,” you replied abruptly, dropping it into his palm. He had really nice, slender fingers, and they were cool on your ear as he worked the earring in. He sat back after a while, satisfied with his work. 

“You never answered the question, y’know,” you said after a little silence, “Why’re you avoiding us?” 

“I guess...I dunno. I’m not so good with people,” he said, scratching at the back of his hand. There was a long silence. 

“Karkat’s technically not a person, y’know,” you said, nudging him with your shoulder. 

“Oh, low blow, man,” he said, laughing a little. 

“It’s true,” you said, a smile tugging at your lips, “something about lawsuits? We have him legally listed down as an animal.” 

“Harsh,” he said, shaking his head. 

“Cheaper though,” you said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Terezi’s hash yelling cut through the atmosphere. 

“We got ‘em down!” she sang, running back into the tent. 

“Hey, TZ, you remember how you said I was insane for saying that we had a janitor?” you said, grabbing onto John’s arm so he couldn’t quite make a break for it. 

“That was Karkat, but yeah. I remember, cool kid,” she said, tilting her head a little. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not insane, ‘cause he’s right here. Right directly in front of your unblinking eyes,” you said. Terezi didn’t look all that impressed. 

“C’mon, John, say something,” you said. He firmly pursed his lips, eyes laughing. You realized what he was doing. 

“You’re _shitting_ me,” you said, exasperated. 

“Guys?” Terezi called over her shoulder, “I think Dave snapped.” 

“Finally!” came Karkat’s almost relieved response. 

“John I swear to fucking god,” you said. He was just barely holding in laughter. 

“He’s talking to the janitor guy? Who’s apparently called John?” she yelled. Karkat yelled something in Vietnamese. She yelled something in vietnamese back. 

“John you asshole,” you said, flopping back onto a chair. It was about then that he burst into uncontrollable laughter. 

“I’m sorry,” he managed, gasping for breath, “I’m sorry it was just TOO GOOD an opportunity to pass up.” There was a general unamused silence. 

“Are you making fun of me because I’m blind, John?” Terezi asked cooly. John paled slightly.

“No, no of course not! I just wanted to make Dave look like an idiot,” he said, awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck. 

“Oh,” she said. There was the slightest pause, and she burst into hysterical laughter, followed closely by John. You rubbed at your face, exasperated. 

“Fine, everyone gang up on Dave. It’s not like I care,” you mumbled. 

“You know we love you, Davey,” she said, doing the thing where she tried to pinch your cheek but ended up grabbing a fistful of your cheek flesh. You half-heartedly slapped her hand away. 

“False alarm!” she sang out over her shoulder, “turns out we DO have a janitor!”

“What?” yelled Vriska, “Since when?” 

“Since now, apparently!” 

“What’s going on?” came Nepeta’s voice from further away. 

“We have a janitor!” yelled Vriska. 

“Animator?” 

“JANITOR!” roared Terezi. John just sat there awkwardly. 

“When did we hire a janitor?” came Equius’s slightly Russian accent. Nepeta replied in unintelligible Russian. The chain continued on in this manner until eventually everyone was standing in the tent, staring lamely at John. He fidgeted uncomfortably. 

“I told you,” you grumbled. 

“Uh, I uh, I don’t mean to be rude, but how long exactly have you been riding our coattails?” Tavros asked quietly. John shrugged. 

“About...3 weeks? 3 weeks max, I think,” he said, worrying at the hem of his thin shirt. Tavros nodded absently. 

“Well, I THOUGHT all our shit was a bit cleaner,” Nepeta said. 

“Language,” Equius mumbled. 

“ _Otebis_ ,” Nepeta replied. Not once did anyone’s eyes leave John. 

“So you’ve basically been sweeping up after each show, and...what?” Karkat asked, an edge of anger in his voice. 

“Well, a bunch of the equipment was getting rusty. Like, dangerous rust, not cool aesthetic rust,” John said. There were some general murmurs of agreement, “and-” before he could get much further, he was interrupted. 

“Where are you from, Jonathan?” Rose asked. 

“Uh, Washington, originally. But I was in Fayetteville when I jumped on the bandwagon,” he said, pushing the glasses back up his nose.  
“How’d you-” you started

“Not now, Dave.” Rose snapped, putting a hand on your face. You started to ask, but John beat you to the punch. 

“Why?” 

“Well, our boss-” “Asshole,” Vriska corrected. 

“Boss has been wound up a little...tight, lately. He didn’t take too kindly to Dave joining the carnival, and I can hardly imagine that ANOTHER new comer would-” 

“What’s this all about?” came the horrific, guttural yelling from the entrance of the circus tent. 

“Shit,” you muttered under your breath. John just looked at you like he had no idea what was going on. The sea of people parted, and then there was nothing between John and Jack. You’re not entirely sure why that made you so nervous. You’d known the kid for like, fifteen minutes. Less than. Plus it was just Jack. What was the worst that could happen? 

Jack took one look at the kid, and from fucking nowhere there was a big ass bowie knife glinting in the residue afternoon light. He was on the kid in three strides, pressing the flat edge of the blade against John’s throat. 

“Who sent you?” he roared, spittle flying out of his mouth and splattering awkwardly onto John’s face, “WHO FUCKING SENT YOU?” There was a long awkward pause. 

“C’mon, Jack, just-” you started. 

“Back the fuck off, kid, or you’re next,” he growled. You put your hands up in surrender. There was a long, tense moment of silence. Without any warning, he whipped around to face you. He had John in what you would probably call a typical hostage hold, one arm firmly around his chest, one hand pressing the knife against his throat. You spent a long time watching John’s eyes. They were scared, terrified. And yet, not panicked. He wasn’t kicking or trying to get away. It was almost like he’d been through all this before. Whilst you were doing that, there was a conversation going on. 

“So, I picked him up off the streets, look at the bastard. He’s skinny,” Vriska said, elongating the word ‘skinny’. 

“Did I or did I not make it very FUCKING clear that this was the last skinny pity case we were picking up off the streets?” Jack spat, jerking his head towards you. You were about to open your mouth and protest that you had picked yourself up off the streets, thank you very much, but one look from Rose told you that would be a Very Bad Idea. 

“Cut the kid some slack,” Vriska said, rolling her eyes, “I mean, he’s hardly been a burden. Nobody even noticed that he was fucking here.” Jack growled a little again, and finally released John, who rubbed at his neck and merged himself into the crowd. 

“No more strays!” Jack yelled, head angrily turning to ensure that everyone was covered in an equal amount of spittle. He stalked off to his ‘Office’ and slammed the door. 

“Fuckass,” Karkat muttered. You snorted. Everyone started drifting away, having lost interest in the shiny new person. 

“Dave he’s your problem now,” Vriska said resignedly. 

“What?” you asked, snapping back to reality. 

“I stuck my neck out for him, so he’s _your_ problem,” she said, really elongating the ‘your’. 

“Yeah, I get that, but what do you mean by problem?” 

“You got a bedroll or sleeping mat, John?” she asked sweetly. 

“Uh, nope, not really,” he said, doing the glasses nudgy thing. 

“Have you been personally introduced to everyone?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. 

“Sorta? I mean, you all gathered around-” 

“Doesn’t count,” she said abruptly, patting his cheek, and looking at you. She was about the same height as you, and yet felt so much taller. It was pretty fucking intimidating. 

“Character profiles. And get him a bed spread or something,” she said, elongating the ‘something’. 

“How the fuck do I get him a-”

“Figure it out.” And she turned on her heels and sashayed away. You sighed. 

“You cool with sharing a bedroll?” you asked resignedly. 

“Sure,” he said with a half-shrug. 

“Sick. That’s one out of two,” you said, and pushed him towards the dinner queue. 

Later that night, at dinner, you gave John a quick run-down of the things he hadn’t managed to pick up for himself. Rose is a lesbian, don’t try it, Kanaya’s a lesbian and is obviously crushing on Rose, Equius is a big and scary looking guy but he would struggle to hurt anything, and steer clear of Gamzee. 

“He’s got mad bipolarity, and Spring tends to be where his extreme manic episodes start. And he uh, he gets hella aggressive.” 

“And the rest of the year?” John asked anxiously. 

“Nah man, he’s fine for the rest of the year. Just Spring, for some reason,” you said with a shrug. 

“Huh. Weird,” John said. There was a pause. “Where’s he from?”

“Fucked if I know,” you replied. Another pause. 

“Wherever it is, they have weird clowns over there,” John said. You laughed a little, under your breath. 

“Yeah. I know what you mean,” you replied, getting up to clear away the bowls. 

As usual, after dinner, everyone drifted off in pairs or more to their own corner of whatever area they’d claimed for the carnival ground, and went to sleep. Everyone except you. For whatever reason, you couldn’t sleep unless there was some sort of background noise. Rose reading was an excellent example of such background noise. She explained, somewhat apologetically to John, something along the lines of a psychological dependence on blah blah blah just read the fucking story about tentacle monsters or whatever. You got the feeling John wasn’t paying extremely close attention to anything she was saying either, from the vacant nods he was giving her. 

You all curled up on the thin mattresses under heavy blankets, and Rose began. It took you a lot of wriggling and squirming to get both John and you on the mat comfortably, and you managed it by lying back to back, head to foot. 

“You comfy?” he asked every five minutes, like his tiny mass was the most astronomical inconvinience to you. 

“I’m fine, dude,” you’d reply, “get some sleep.” 

It was way more comfortable than you’d like to admit, John’s back squished up against yours. It was like leaning against a thin wall with a hot-water pipe running through it. It was...warm. Secure. You felt oddly safe. Aside from the odd, gentle kick to the back of your head, it was the most comfy you’d been in days. And if John didn’t even have a fucking bed roll or _anything_ , it was probably the most comfortable he’d been in weeks. But...there was still the nagging thought in the back of your mind.

Sleeping fine without a bedroll, his unnerving calm in a life-or-death situation, Washington to Arkansas, and running away with the circus. You got the uneasy feeling that John was keeping something important from you. 

You pushed the thought out of your head, and snuggled down to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like, exam week? So probably not super frequent updates. They will come though. I promise. This will be completed


	3. Dancing Around the Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave and John have a discussion about Stars and the past, Jack gets suspicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk what's happening. sorry this took so long :C

You managed to put up with the secrecy for about 24 hours. As in, exactly 24 hours. After that, you began to go a little insane. 

At first, you only asked in polite questions that danced around what you were actually getting at. “Why Arkansas?”, “that business with Jack was hella intense, huh?”, “Man, how the fuck did you manage to sleep on this cold as fuck ground without a sleeping mat for 3 weeks?”. He deflected everything in a way that wasn’t especially suspicious, and so made you doubly suspicious. “Arkansas just seemed interesting, I guess”, “Yeah, he seems like a pretty intense person”, “Dunno, just did! Seems pretty crazy now.”. 

After that, any politeness went out the window. “What possible reason could you have for moving across the fucking country?”, “Jack pulled a knife on you and you barely even _flinched,_ you know that?”, and most often, “if you can’t tumble, jump, or lift, why would you run away with the fucking circus?”. The last one bothered you the most, because he usually managed to deflect it with the indisputable fact that YOU hadn’t been able to tumble, jump or lift when YOU ran away with the circus. 

Aside from the (fairly constant) barrage of (fairly rude) questions, you guys had managed to get along pretty well. He’d wheedled most of your tragic backstory out of you, along with the info supplied by Rose, and had a pretty comprehensive view of your life pre-circus. He’d let little, tiny details through, like his favourite subject at school and that he was an inly child and that he’d lived with his cake-loving dad and that he had pretty severe asthma but no inhaler. He was also a self proclaimed ‘master of pranks’, which you’d laughed at.

“Seriously. Pranks? How old are you, five?” you’d replied one day whilst everyone was getting dressed and ready for the show. All you’d had to do was put on some island-y looking pants and take off your shirt, and John didn’t get a costume, for obvious reasons. 

“Don’t diss the pranks, Dave,” John said seriously, leaning on his stupid, enormous broom, “It’s an ancient art, known by all and mastered by few.” 

“Like kung-fu,” you said jokingly. 

“Yeah! You learn under a mystic old dude...”

“In the impossible to reach mountains of fucking Nepal or China or something, right?”

“Totally. And you learn for years and years until you become a master, and prank the mystic old dude successfully,” John said, grinning in that goofy, lopsided way. You just shook your head, laughing a little. 

“Fuckin’ amazing,” you sighed. 

“You still TOTALLY dissed pranks, though,” John said, deadly serious, “I’m gonna get you back for that.” And he just disappeared. He was good at the disappearing thing. Maybe he could become an escape artist...

He did “get you back”. Several times. 9 times outta 10 it was the shitty, lowbrow stuff, like pushing your face into a bowl of soup, putting your bedroll in the lion’s cage, stealing your shades and hiding them on the trapeze platform, so you had to climb up the ladder with your eyes shut (your eyes were really fucking sensitive to the light. Something about pigmentation and a poor pupillary light reflex? You weren’t paying terribly close attention when the doctor’d explained it), that sorta stuff. And then occasionally he’d pull something really good, like hide somewhere all day and get everyone to convince you they had no idea who John was. That had been a great day of questioning your sanity. 

John never got a chance to go and get a proper bed-roll, so he kept sharing yours. Slowly, as you two got more comfortable with each other, the sleeping situation changed. It was generally more comfortable for the both of you to lie back to back, but with your heads both on the same half as the mattress. Then after a little while the back-to-back deal pretty much disintegrated, and you slept however the fuck you wanted. You’d go to bed on your stomach, and John curled up on his side, but wake up with John sprawled across your chest and your arms wrapped around his legs or something like that. You usually woke up either way too early or way too late, something about your sleep cycle made it impossible for you to wake up at anything that was even vaguely appropriate. Sucked, but you just worked around it. 

You performed. John swept up. You asked questions. John deflected them. Terezi called you adorable. Karkat made gagging noises whenever you two were in arms reach of each other. Life cycled on. 

~

“Y’know,” you said one night, “something I never really got was people’s fascination with the stars.” You were both lying on your backs, looking up at the night sky. Everyone else was asleep, but you were still struggling with it. John looked exhausted, but you were 80% sure he was staying awake to keep you company. You were glad of it. Your scratched, chipped shades sat carefully folded at the foot of your bed, sitting on your small bag you kept spare clothes in. 

“Well, they’re pretty,” John said, tilting his head a little, “and they sure do a good job of reminding you of your own insignificance!”

“Yeah, but they’re just bright lil’ dots on a black-ish, purple-ish background. Hell, if I wanted to look at that, I could just get a black sheet of paper and a white crayon. I wouldn’t even have to leave the house that way,” you said, glancing over at him. He laughed a little, his face crumpling up with the movement. You felt some sorta dull ache rise in your stomach.

“Yeah but then you don’t get the existential crisis!” he said, looking over at you, “Y’know, ‘who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What’s the meaning of life’-”

“Sure you do,” you said with a shrug, “You go ‘Why am I dotting this fuckin piece of black paper with a white crayon?’” John laughed again, rolling his eyes a little. There was a long silence, punctuated by his slightly wheezy breathing.

“I bet they’d be a lot more interesting if I knew anything about the constellations or something,” you said under your breath, unable to deal with the silence. 

“Oh!” John said, quietly, and shuffled marginally closer to you, “That’s Orion’s belt, see?” You followed the invisible line his long, slender finger drew to the three stars in a row. 

“Kay...” you said slowly. 

“Right. And if you can find Orion’s belt, you can find Orion,” John said, and his hand moved again, tracing some sort of secret path that became obvious once you’d seen it. 

“Huh,” was all you said. 

“Yup!” John chirped. You could feel his eyes darting over the sky, trying to find more strange patterns that dead men had drawn. 

“There! Ursa Major,” John said, connecting some dots that didn’t even REMOTELY look like a bear, “and Ursa Minor.” 

“Damn, you some sorta star-expert John?” you asked, a grin tugging at the corners of your mouth. 

“That’s only like, three constellations!” John said, and started babbling, connecting the dots faster and faster, speaking faster and faster. ‘Columba and....Taurus, Horologium and Lepus and...Eridanus and Fornax and Gemini and Monoceros and AurigaandCaelumandCarniaand’ eventually you lost track of what he was saying, and let yourself just enjoy the sound of the words.  Eventually you became aware of the fact that he wasn’t speaking anymore. You let your eyes drift shut, listening to the slight wheezing of his chest. 

“I remember drawing those,” you hear him say under his breath, and you crack open an eye to look over at him. He catches you looking funny at him, and you swear he blushes a little. It’s difficult to tell in the dim light. He moves his mouth a little before he finds the explanation

“I had this dream once. Kinda stuck with me,” is all he says, and looks back up. You chuckle under your breath. 

“You’re a pretty weird kid,” is all you say. There’s another long pause. 

“Hey John,” you’d started quietly. 

“You know you’re not gonna get an answer, Dave,” was all he said, with a small sigh. There was a short, wheezy silence. 

“I know,” you replied softly. He turned to look at you. 

“So why d’you keep asking?” he asked, the smallest, saddest smile on his lips. You catch his eyes and there’s this...look about them. Something not quite old or sleepy or anything like that. Just...tired. An edge to the gaze, a certain hardness to the look. Like John had seen everything and yet understood nothing. It passed soon enough, and you quickly forgot about it. 

“I dunno,” you sighed, “I guess...I dunno.” There was a log silence, and you were sure that he’d fallen asleep.

“What were you going to ask?” John said finally, looking over at you. You blinked at him a little. All the fucking questions that you’d been storing, and you couldn’t remember a single one of them. 

“When Jack pulled that knife on you, most people would’ve screamed, or struggled, or panicked in some way, shape or form,” you said, finally finding your voice, “You didn’t.” 

“And?” he asked after the smallest pause. 

“Why didn’t you?” He puffed out a huff of air, looking back up at the stars. It condensed in the air around his mouth, making a cold little cloud of breath.

“Well, I uh,” he scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck, “It’s a long story.” 

“Awesome,” you said, turning on your side so you could get a better look at him, “Gather ‘round the trash fire, kiddies, it’s motherfucking story time up in here.” John laughed quietly, shuffling a little so that he was facing you, curled up on his side. 

“See, I used to live in Washington with me dad,” he said, picking his words carefully. 

“Yeah, you said that already,” you interrupted impatiently. 

“Dave, could you shut up for like, ten minutes?” he snapped. You mouth clacked shut. He sighed a little. 

“Sorry, I just...” he said, chewing on his bottom lip, “I’m not really sure how to explain it.” 

“Sore spot?” you’d asked after a brief silence. He shrugged. 

“Not really. Just hafta figure out a way to explain it _without_ hitting the sore spot,” he said, licking his lips. 

“If you really don’t wanna tell, y’don’t hafta,” you said quietly. Something sort of like guilt, but sort of like intense curiosity bubbled in your stomach. He gave the tiniest snort of a laugh

“It’s fine Dave, really. It’s pretty simple,” he gave you a genuine smile, and shrugged one shoulder a little, “I used to live in Washington, but I was pretty unhappy, so I just walked myself down to Fayetteville. Decided to y’know, try again. The road was super dangerous, as you’d expect.” He laughed a little, without any humor, “That wasn’t the first time someone pulled a knife on me.” You just looked at him, mouth hanging slightly open. 

“Damn,” you said after a while, “I mean, for a fucking nerd, that’s pretty hardcore.” 

“Nerd?” he squawked incredulously. 

“Yeah man,” you smirked, grabbing his cheek like Terezi did, “Nerd.”

~

The next day Terezi kicked you awake. 

“C’mon, Coolkid” she said as you fumbled for your shades, “it’s Showtime.” 

“Where’s John?” you asked, blinking the sleep out of your eyes. 

“How would I know?” she said pulling you to your feet, “Who cares? You have like five minutes to get ready.” You started off towards the already erected bigtop, awkwardly glancing around for the messy haired kid. Probably trying to show off his card tricks to rose or something. He was fine. How much trouble could he get into anyway? 

“Dave!” Nepeta chirped. You whipped around, trying to locate the voice. Where were you headed again?

“Yeah?” 

“Performer’s entrance is back that way!” she grinned, jerking her thumb. You blinked a little. When had you passed that? 

“Thanks,” you said, and started back towards it. You really shouldn’t be thinking about John this much, it just couldn’t be healthy. He was fine. He’d show up on the opposite side of the ring just in time to watch Vriska flip her dumb BMX bike through a bunch of flaming hoops. He was fine. What was the worst that could happen? You struggled into your stupid pants and ran out to the waiting-y area, or the closest you could get to backstage. 

You could hear the kids screaming and giggling as Karkat did his ‘pre-show walk through the audience’ bit. He claimed to hate it, but you knew he wouldn’t keep volunteering for it if he did. The kids would generally climb all over him, petting his fur, yanking his tail, prodding his horns, poking at his teeth, the whole thing. All he had to do was act grumpy and growl occasionally. He was in his element. 

Then the spotlight (usually manned by Equius, or Nepeta when Equius was performing) clicked on and whoever was standing up scrambled to their seats. Karkat swung his way majestically into the ring and scrambled off stage, and Kanaya started her carefully pronounced, slightly accented opening spiel. 

“Ladies, Gentlemen and Other,” she said, earning some hushed giggles, “Welcome to our humble circus.” She bowed, everyone whispered a little.

“We have a very, VERY exciting line up, starting with-” she said, but was cut short by Karkat scrambling forward, whispering something. She pretended to look shocked. 

“But we ordered fifty,” she badly stage whispered. Some people in the audience giggled awkwardly. You tried not to think about the way John normally laughed when she said that line. Karkat shrugged, and Kanaya sighed. 

“Very well then,” she turned back to the audience, bowing again, “We will have to miss the grand opening, and instead begin with Rose Lallonde.” There was some awkward clapping. Rose sashayed onto the stage, covered in billowing , silently observing the members of the audience. 

“My English...weak,” she lied apologetically. It apparently made the whole thing more mysterious or something. Without much else warning, she spun around and threw her hands up. The spotlight died with a convincing pop, and Equius started yelling for a spare bulb. In the mean time, the wind in the tent picked up, and snake-like shadows weaved their way around Rose, who was standing still in the center. By the time the spotlight was turned back on, there was nothing left of Rose but a cloud of confetti. The audience, naturally went nuts. You scanned the rest of the backstage for John. Where the fuck was he? He was always trying to figure out how Rose did that. 

After that it was the generic Strong Man act from Equius. 

“I will give ten thousand dollars to the person who can lift more than me,” he said, looking around the audience. Someone came forward, and the barbell got put down next to a bunch of weights. The audience man, naturally, added all the weights he could, and managed to lift it with some difficulty. Equius pensively stroked at his stubble, nodding. 

“Yes, yes that’s quite impressive,” he would say, and pace around like he couldn’t imagine loosing ten thousand dollars. He then asked the dude to pick up the weight again, and without missing a beat, Equius picked up the man AND the barbell. Everyone cheered, he shook the man’s hand, and left. 

“It’s like the douche olympics,” you said to nobody in particular. Aradia just glowered at you. Right. 

“John would’ve laughed,” you mumbled. 

“I’m not your blushing janitor boyfriend,” she whispered.

“He’s not my-” you started, but she cut you off, pointing on stage. 

Terezi had already done her whole proving that she’s blind thing, and Karkat had pulled the spinning wheel of death out. Terezi managed to strap him to the thing with as much difficulty as she could, and gave it an experimental spin. He spun around, a bunch of kids laughed. 

“You alright, Karkles?” she asked sweetly. 

“Just a little dizzy,” he said. 

“Great! Now we can begin!” she said, giving him another spin, and confidently strode over to the table covered with a cloth. She pulled it off to reveal a wide variety of knives. Rusty, shiny, big, small, there was one spear there. She started with the little ones, throwing them with an unnerving confidence. The audience gasped, a lot of women went pale, and by the time Karkat was released from the spinning wheel of death (walking wonkily and eventually collapsing, which got a couple startled laughs) there was a perfect Karkat outline. 

“Just remember, children,” Terezi said, with her trademarked grin, “Don’t try that at home, unless you’re blind.” She bowed, everyone laughed, and she wheeled the wheel of death off. 

Kanaya was halfway through announcing your name when you realized you were on next. Aradia actually had to push you out onto the stage. _Where is John. Seriously, this is getting stupid. He probably tripped and hurt himself. What if he’s lying at the bottom of a ditch with both his legs broken. Maybe he’s in the middle of an asthma attack. Nobody else knew he was asthmatic, he could be dying. How the hell do you even help someone in the middle of an asthma attack? He didn’t have an inhaler. C’mon, Dave, he’s fine. Why the hell are you worrying about this so much? Why was Aradia looking at you like that? Right. You’re on stage._ You guys didn’t have any backing music, so you had to make a beat yourself. Stomprhythmically, clap occasionally, get the audience to pick up the beat ( _where the fuck is John I haven’t seen him all morning you were asleep all morning shut up_ ), light the huge stick with cloth soaked in kerosene at each end. Twirl it, spin around a lot, pretend fight Aradia with the fire, don’t get burned, make it up. The only real choreography that Aradia and you had ever worked out was that at one point the sticks would “break”, you would rip the burning cloth off the ends of the stick and hold it in your hands so it would look like you were firebending. That part required concentration that you just didn’t have because holy fucking shit you were worried about John, where could he-oh. There he was. Just standing there, where he normally stood, leaning on his broom. He mouthed out ‘Sorry’ apologetically, and everything was fine. You kept going, dancing faster and faster, until you shook the flames out and backflipped off stage as the audience cheered. 

“Where were you this morning?” you asked quietly as Kanaya really built up Tavros to be like ‘Peter pan, in grace, style and’ blah blah blah. 

“Jack wanted to ask me some stuff,” John whispered back, “He had like 500 questions. It was super weird.”

“Never happened to me,” you said with a shrug, but John shushed you.

“I _love_ this bit,” he said, almost breathless. Tavros slowly, sadly wheeled his way out into the ring. His wheelchair had been reconstructed from a patchwork of other wheelchairs. The two wheels were different colours and different thicknesses, and Kanaya had sewn about thirty patches into the chair to keep the stuffing from coming out

“I am so sorry, ringmaster, but I was in a terrible accident the other day, and I have lost the use of my legs,” he said quietly in his adorable french accent. There were some ‘Aww’s from the audience. Tavros’s face suddenly lit up like a christmas tree. 

“No matter! The show must go on!” Tavros said, and began to climb up the ladder to the trapeze, obviously without using his legs. 

“You’ve seen this show, what? Twenty times?” you said, grinning a little, “and you’re STILL telling me to shut up during the sappy parts?” 

“Shut up!” John whispered, punching you gently on the shoulder, “it’s cute, alright?”

Apparently the only appropriate response to that is,“You’re cute.’ He looked at you, eyebrows raised. 

“What?” he asked quietly

“What?” you said, like you had no idea what he was talking about. He just squinted at you, and went back to watching Tavros swing around on the overrated swing-set despite the fact that he had no legs. Nice save, Dave! Why did you even say that? Pretty out of the blue. 

“Hey. Strider. You, in my office, now,” came the familiar growl. You rolled your eyes. 

“You mean the RV?” you asked sweetly, turning to Jack. He snarled, grabbed your arm, and dragged you out of the tent. 

“Y’know we’re in the middle of a show,” you said, trying to squirm away, “and I’m like, 80% sure this infringes on my rights as a worker.”

“I have an illegal lion, kid. Do you really think I give a shit about your worker rights?” he gurgled.

~

He practically dragged you over to the shabby RV that had ‘Office’ spray-painted on the side. He literally kicked open the door, sat you down in the threadbare, spinny office chair, and sat down across from you. The whole fucking place stank of tobacco, the thick, musty smell everywhere you turned. Invisible, and oppressive. 

“Look, kid, I’m gonna ask you a buncha questions, and you’re gonna answer them honestly, and if you don’t, I’m gonna leave your sorry ass by the side of the fucking road. Got it?” he asked, pulling out an honest-to-god tape recorder. 

“Pretty sure THAT infringes on my rights as a worker too,” you said, swiveling in the chair a little. 

“You never signed a contract, so you’re actually legally a slave,” he said dismissively. 

“Nice to know,” you said sarcastically, “what’s all this about, Jack?”

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice confidentially, “I have reason to suspect-”

“Wow, professional jargon. You’re like some sorta business man, Jack.” 

“REASON to SUSPECT that there’s a fucking cop amongst the ranks,” he said, between gritted teeth, “and you and that fucking boyfriend of yours-”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” 

“The POINT IS that you two joined the most recently, and these problems with the police started rising recently,” he snarled, “now, are you a fucking cop?” You blinked a little, and resisted the extremely strong urge to point out that asking you if you were a cop was probably not the best way to find out if you were a cop. 

“Look, Jack, all I’m gonna say is that if I was a cop, I woulda had a better segway into the circus than jumping on the back of the fucking truck,” you said. He nodded, like it made sense, but continued to ask weird and invasive questions. How old are you, when’s your birthdate, have you ever been arrested, do you know your Miranda Rights, what colour is the sky, why do you wear your shades, blah blah blah. It was dark and cold by the time he let you out. 

~

“Dude, everyone thinks we’re dating,” you told John that night. It was weirdly cold for spring, so you figured that you all were headed north. You and John were lying a little closer than usual, to share body heat. 

“I know! It’s super weird,” he said, laughing. You’d figured out that John laughed a lot. 

“I mean, we do share a bed roll,” you said. 

“And we pretty much sit next to each other in any situation,” he said, thoughtfully. 

“This morning I kept talking to you even though you weren’t there,” you smirked. 

“Me too!” he laughed. There was a pause. 

“It probably looks like we’re dating,” you said. 

“It TOTALLY looks like we’re dating, oh my god!” he laughed. You couldn’t help but laugh along. 

“We’re dating at some level. Like...platonic dating,” you grinned. You tried to ignore the little weight of disappointment that settled over you at the word ‘platonic’. 

“Platonic boyfriends! Is that a thing?” John asked, looking over at you. 

“Yeah, it’s called ‘best friends’,” you said, elbowing him a little.

“I’ve never really had a best friend before,” he said quietly, more to himself than you. 

“Nice to know I’m going into this ordeal with low expectations,” you said, and he laughed. He laughed for a long time, and suddenly he was crying. Shuddering, stuttering, almost silent sobbing, but you could feel it in the slight tremors of his arm next to yours. That took you completely by surprise, it seemed like pretty random thing to start crying over. 

“John?” you asked gently. 

“I’m fine,” he said shakily, voice thick with tears. 

“John,” you said again, sitting up a little. He just sniffled up at you, hurriedly blinking away tears. 

“It’s...difficult to explain,” he whispered. You bit your lip. 

“You don’t have to. Not yet,” you said. It was true. You were, as usual, curious as hell, but you figured getting John to not cry was your priority at the moment. He nodded, wiping the last of the tears away with the back of his hand. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time an old lady threw a bible at me?” you said quickly, praying it would help. John let out the smallest laugh, looking up at you with wide eyes. 

“No, no you didn’t!” he said, waiting patiently for the rest of the story. You lay back down next to him, awkwardly resting your head against the crown of his in a poorly thought out attempt at comfort. 

“See, I have a fuck ton of piercings. And I have a metric fuck ton of tattoos. _And_ I was in a gang. Add that to the red eyes, and you have yourself modern day lucifer,” you said. John laughed quietly. 

“Now, growing up in the middle of the fucking bible belt, the last thing you wanna be is looking like modern day lucifer. So I’m walking down the street, minding my own business, and suddenly I feel this sharp pain in the small of my back. Naturally, I go ‘What the Fuck’ and look around. I notice two things, right. First off, there’s a little pocket bible lying on the ground right near my feet, and second off, there’s a little old lady with a wheely basket full of shopping a stone’s throw away.”

“No way,” John laughed, looking up at you. 

“Yup. And she shuffles forward to pick up the bible, and I ask the natural question, ‘did you just throw that at me?’. She nods, not even making fucking eye contact. ‘Why?’ I ask, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer. Sure as shit, she goes ‘because you have allowed the devil into your life.’” John starts giggling like crazy. 

“Holy shit! What did you say?” he asked, eyes wide. 

“I did this,” you say, and pull your eyelids up whilst rolling your eyes down so that they’re completely white. 

“Ew,” John laughs. You laugh at him laughing. He laughs at you laughing at him laughing. Five minutes later, he’s snoring, half of his face pressed into your chest. He looks...peaceful when he sleeps. But that’s not quite the right word. You watch him sleep for a little while, slowly overcome with wave after wave of affection for the little guy. 

Something scratched at the back of your mind, an emotion or a feeling or something that you didn’t really want to acknowledge or even name. You didn’t, and were asleep a few moments later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew. Next chapter's probably gonna be some FWP, or at least contain it, so it might be a bit shorter.


	4. The Pinecone Waltz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Dave climb trees and are attacked by dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever and I'm sorry.

Something had definitely changed. You’d known that for a while, sure, but it’d never hit you full force. John was, well, John. He was nerdy and spaced out and said things that didn’t make any sense to anyone except him. John was John. So maybe it was you? 

 

You seemed to notice the way John would get distant and stare intently at a blank wall for a while before snapping back to reality more acutely than before. You felt like you noticed the way he’d fiddle with his stupid, old glasses when he got nervous or excited or anxious or anything. You noticed all the little hints telling you that there was something up with him, something up that went beyond the usual ‘something’ people generally had. There was something up with you, something up with Rose, everyone had something up. It was generally considered rude to ask about. But John’s seemed to be...festering. Building. Developing in a way, to a bigger something. To you at least. You’d need to get him talking at some point, but you had to do it in a subtle way, one that wouldn’t make him break down. As it stood, you saw two options. A) Ask intrusive questions, don’t take no for an answer, and suffer through the guilt of making him cry, or B) let him off the hook, act like your curiosity had been slated, and let his Something grow like a malignant tumor. Great choice. You hoped a third might present itself at some point. 

 

There was something else. You’d noticed John more. You’d noticed the colour of his hair more (Black, but like a warm black), his eyes (Bluer towards the pupil, fading to a blue-grey at the edges of his iris), the exact number of callouses on his hands (fifteen), exactly where they were, hell you’d been able to tell it was John from the wheezing of his breath when he snuck up on you the other day. It was almost disturbing, you might say off-putting, how intimately you knew him. What was worse was that you wanted more. These days you slept curled up next to each other, his head on your chest, your face in the crook of his arm. You were a tangle of limbs, _way_ closer than friends really should be, both physically and emotionally. But it never felt like enough. You weren’t crushing on him. You couldn’t be crushing on him. The guy still didn’t have a fucking bedroll yet, so he had to share with you, and it couldn’t be healthy for him to sleep with someone inlove with him. He liked Vriska, anyway. Why didn’t John have a bedroll? It’s been ages. Oh yeah, every time you guys were near enough to a town to go buy one, Jack got pissy when he tried to leave. Weird. But whatever. 

 

That was something else that was changing; Jack. He seemed more highly strung than usual. You, as usual, tried to avoid him. You guessed something about the police? Who cared. All Jack really had to do was ‘grease some palms’, as it were, and Poof, no more cop trouble. I mean, there were drug cartels around. The police had better things to do than track down one little, extremely illegal circus. But whatever. Whatever would be would be. 

~

At present, you were wandering around the little spot you’d made up camp, wondering where the fuck everyone had gone. Gamzee was snoring in the corner, but you decided it would be a bad thing to wake him up and ask. You glanced around. The tent wasn’t set up, so there was no way there was a show on right now. It was like, midday as well. Nepeta was usually making some description of food by now. Weird. 

“Hey!” someone yelled from behind you. You jumped about a foot in the air, whipping around to see who the fuck decided it was a good idea to yell at you. Vriska. Of course. You acted cool, hoping she hadn’t seen you freak out. 

“I saw that,” she said, smirking. Damn. 

“The fuck is everyone?” you asked, not bothering with the pleasantries. 

“Are you looking for...” she paused, drawing out the ‘for’ “anyone in particular?” 

“Yeah,” you said, “the rest of the circus.” 

“Not anyone spesific?” she asked, sashaying forward. He skirts swished, “not anyone like...your-” 

“For FUCKS SAKE we ain’t daiting!” you snapped, running a hand through your hair. She pouted. 

“It’s a shame,” she said, walking past you, “you’re so cute together.” For a lack of a better thing to do, you trailed behind her. 

“So where is everyone?” you asked, finally. 

“There’s a lake nearby. Everyone’s splashing around like morons.”

“Isn’t it like, forty degrees?” you asked. You guys were moving north; it was only getting colder. 

“Yes. Care to join?” she asked, glancing over at you. 

“Hell fucking yes,” you replied, grinning a little. You’d always ( _shirtless John_ ) really enjoyed swimming. Growing up in Texas ( _shirtless John_ ) meant that most days were hot as hell, and the ( _shirtless John_ ) only relief from the fucking heat was ( _shirtless John_ ) the local swimming pool. That was it. A bit of nostalgia. You totally weren’t going for the prospect of a shirtless John, because you weren’t crushing on him. 

 

Okay, so it _helped_.

 

You walked a little ways into the cool woods, and suddenly came into a clearing. The lake wasn’t particularly wide, but looked fucking deep considering that Equius wasn’t very far in and could barely keep his head above the water. Also, Equius was like, seven feet or more. Nepeta was on his shoulders, loudly proclaiming herself the queen of all things forever whilst Aradia had Tavros on her shoulders and he was trying to knock Nepeta off with a stick. You felt like that could go really badly really quickly, seeing as Tavros might drown, but whatever. He probably had it. Terezi was laughing very loudly as Karkat complained about something very loudly. It was all in Vietnamese, so you had no idea what he was moaning about. Probably something about how cold it was or something equally dumb. What a nerd. Rose and Kanaya were sitting by the shore, talking quietly about something. Rose couldn’t go swimming, ‘cause she didn’t have a swimsuit that covered her whole body. Kanaya chose not to go swimming because then everyone saw those scars. There was the one person missing. 

“Where’s-” you started, but stopped as soon as you saw Vriska give you the face. You scowled at her, starting to formulate an argument, when something hit you in the back of the head. 

 

“Bullseye!” someone yelled. You looked behind you, and sitting in one of the trees was John. He was pulling one of the smaller pinecones off a branch above him, and another lay at your feet. 

“John!” you yelled, trying to sound annoyed. He glanced back at you, grinning. You had to suppress the massive, dorky smile you felt spreading over your face. Damn, that smile could probably cure cancer. You dashed towards the tree, scrambling your way up to just above the branch he was sitting on. 

“Hi!” he chirped. 

“Sup,” you replied. He went back to collecting a small army of pinecones. 

“Wanna help me throw pinecones at the rest of them?” he asked. You scoffed. 

“What are you? Five?” 

“Five and a half, thank you very much, Mr. Bigshot,” he said, sticking his tongue out at you. You snorted, twisting one of the small, green things off the branch. You watched him line up a shot he’d never make at Rose, and watched the thing sail a little ways before planting itself in the sand a few feet away from you. You gently threw yours directly at the top of John’s head. You didn’t throw it very hard, but he was clearly startled by it, jumping and glaring at you. 

“You wanna go, Strider?” he asked, grabbing one off the branch and chucking it at you. You dodged it easily. You threw another at him, climbing a little ways up.

“It’s over, Anikan! I have the high ground!” you yelled. He laughed a little, clambering up with weird speed and dexterity. You laughed, following him. You climbed higher than you should, throwing pinecones at each other until you finally reached the last branch that could possibly hold your weight. You two were up pretty high, and from here everything looked much smaller. There wasn’t much room on the branch, so you were pressed pretty close together. You had one arm around the tree and one fisted in John’s shirt. You weren’t afraid of heights, and neither was John. He did, however, look like he was contemplating going a bit higher. Suicidal maniac. Down below, Terezi had finally gotten Karkat in the water, and they were contributing to the chicken fight. 

“Looks cold as balls,” you offered. He laughed, nodding a little. 

“Yeah. I’ve seen colder, though,” he grinned at you, tossing a pinecone at your face for good measure. It lamely bounced off your nose, tumbling down the tree, bouncing and deflecting off branches as it went. 

“Thanks,” you said. He laughed, his annoying ass laugh. It was high pitched and loud and harsh and you loved it. 

“So, not swimming?” he asked, nudging you. You scoffed. 

“Fuck no. It’s all of forty degrees in this bitch, not a fucking degree more. That water’s probably cold enough to make ice cream. I’ll get hypothermia and die. Bad idea all around.” 

“Yeah,” he laughed. A wind blew through, shaking the tree branches. He grabbed onto your arm for support, laughing a little. You just watched him, noticing the way his hair stuck up on all ends, the sharp curve of his nose, the scratches on his glasses. You took the time to commit him to memory. 

“Too cold for you too?” you asked, making plans to push him in once you clambered down. He musta read your mind, or else it was just really obvious from your face, because he wrinkled his nose up at you. 

“I can’t swim, Dave.” That one made you stop. 

“You what?” you asked, not quite getting it. He laughed a little. 

“Error 314: Dave.exe has crashed,” he giggled. He pressed his hand into your face, twisting it around a little, “stop making that face!” 

“What face?” 

“The ‘Dave.exe has crashed face!’ he yelled. 

“It’s just both shockin’ and mysterious that you went through your whole life without ONCE learning how to swim.”

“I learned! I just...forgot,” he said, guiltily. 

“How’d you forget how to swim?” you asked, almost gently. No reply. 

“John-” you said quietly after a long time. He just sighed. 

“I’ll tell you eventually,” he said quietly, “It’s just...it’s complicated, okay? It’ll take FOREVER to explain, and then I’m not sure if you’ll even get it.”

“I’m smarter than I look, y’know,” you said. 

“That’s a good thing! If you were DUMBER than you look, you’d be too dumb to function,” he laughed. It was something of a weak laugh, like he wasn’t terribly sure if he should be laughing. 

“Look man, d’you think you could tell me like, next week or something?” you asked, running a hand through your hair. 

“Why do you care so much?” John asked, his voice hard, but quiet. 

“I dunno, I just,” you paused, not sure if you should tell him or not, “I’m worried, man. You’ve been acting kinda weird, and I thought maybe if I knew what was up I might be able to help. Like a...knight in shinin’ armor or some shit.” 

 

John’s face softened, and he looked at you with a mix of something like despair and something like admiration. Like you’d said the complete wrong thing, but he was absolutely touched by it. He blinked at you a bit, open mouthed, before eventually sighing and smiling almost sadly. 

“Next week. I promise I’ll tell you,” he said, almost laughing. You smirked to yourself. Score. You twisted a pinecone off the branch and tossed it at him. It lamely bounced off his temple and tumbled to the ground. 

“Thanks,” he said, nudging you. 

 

“EY! LOVEBIRDS!” Karkat yelled from the bottom of the tree, “IT’S COLD AND WE’RE GOING HOME.” John hurled a pinecone at him. It hit him in the middle of the forehead. 

“BULLSEYE!” you both roared. Karkat slunk away, grumbling to himself. You highfived John, laughing under your breath. 

“Dude, that was BEAUTIFUL,” you said, starting to climb down. 

“You’re beautiful,” he mumbled under his breath. Your heart stopped, and you swear you nearly slipped off the whole fucking tree. 

“What?” you asked quietly. 

“What?” he replied innocently. You squinted at him, resuming your slow climb down. 

“Y’know, if this was a movie, this is when one of us would fall,” John said, laughing a little. 

“You’d fall,” you said, “because I’d catch you and it would be a beautiful moment of friendship.” 

“Touch wood,” John said, laughing. 

“All day, everyday, baby,” you replied. He laughed. Not five seconds after you said that, you grabbed a dead branch and plummeted towards the ground. 

 

You came around a little while later, on your side with an extra jacket chucked over you. You tried to form words, but communicating felt like a pretty big problem. You just rolled over, to see the slightly pale and extremely worried face of John. He pushed his glasses further up his nose.

“Dave! Holy shit!” he said, breathing a huge sigh of relief. You made an incoherent noise. 

“Dude, you scared the shit out of me!” he yelled, sitting down and out of your line of view. You made a noise that was equivalent to how “???” looks. 

“You just fell right out of the tree! Hit your head pretty hard too. But we weren’t up super high. I checked you over, and I don’t think you broke anything? Do you feel like, nauseous or ill or dizzy or anything? Does anything hurt? Can you feel your feet?” he said, very quickly. It took you a little while to sort through all that information. 

“I’m motherfucking bomb proof,” you murmured, all the syllables running together. He laughs nervously. 

“You’re an idiot,” he said, popping back into your view. You grinned at him. 

“All day, everyday, baby,” you said, sitting yourself up. He put a hand on the small of your back, checking you over. 

“John, I’m fine,” you insisted, handing him back his jacket. 

“But you might be-” 

“I’ve had a concussion before, okay? Nothing like this,” you said, rubbing at your shoulder. Nothing felt broken, that was a positive. It was surprising. John didn’t looked convinced. 

“You don’t ever get to climb trees again,” he said, scowling. 

“I’m fine!” you said, putting up your hands defensively, “now help me up.”

“Yeah, but your tree-climbing privileges have been revoked,” he said, grabbing your outstretched hands. You pulled yourself to your feet, swaying a little. John ran at you, wrapping his arms around your midsection and squeezing as tight as he could. You just awkwardly hugged back. It probably felt nicer than it should’ve, but having his face pressed into your chest and him holding on like he was afraid to let you go, it felt...different. For a long time, you’d felt unreal, like you weren’t really there, like you were just some poorly written side character. But John hugging you somehow made you feel real. Like you were important. 

 

Like you were alive. 

 

He pulled away reluctantly after a little while, and punched you on the shoulder. It hurt. He was stronger than he looked. 

“Dude!” you hissed, rubbing it. 

“You scared the living shit out of me, asshole!” he yelled, screwing up his face. You laughed a little, tousling his hair. 

“IOU one apology,” you muttered. He laughed a little, obviously still trying to pretend to be mad, but caved eventually. His face softened a little. He grabbed your hand, and gently pulled you back to camp. You agreed not to tell anyone else about the fall. Your little secret. 

 

Nobody asked, because when you got back, everything was in a ild state of chaos. Karkat and Vriska were arguing very animatedly with some middle aged man, who was pointing to a small girl, who was in tears. Gamzee had evidently woken up from his nap, and was glancing around like he didn’t quite understand what was going on. You two edged a bit closer to see what the hell was going on. 

“Look, all I’M doing as an AMERICAN CITIZEN,” you heard the balding white guy say. 

“Oh boy,” you muttered under your breath. 

“Is exercising MY first amendment RIGHTS, and telling you to keep your FUCKING FREAK FRIEND UNDER CONTROL,” he yelled. 

“The girl looked lost,” Aradia pointed out calmly, “and seemed quite happy to look after your daughter.” 

“Ohhhhh boy,” John said under his breath. The little girl’s arm was being grasped quite tightly in the man’s hand. She was a chubby girl, with oval glasses that perfectly framed her red eyes. She’d been crying. 

“I was FUCKING watching her!” he yelled, taking a step closer to Aradia, “Are you implying that I am a bad parent?” 

“Look,” Vriska said, drawing out the word. You could hear the smile. Shit. “all we’re saying is that your kid seemed perfectly happy with this complete stranger wearing strange facepaint until you turned up. Says a lot more about you than us.” 

“And what kinda father swears around his kids, huh?” Karkat butted in, sounding almost disgusted. The girl squirmed in his grip. 

“For FUCKS SAKE, stop WRIGGLING,” the man roared at her. He turned just enough to reveal the large, snarling black dog on a choker chain in his other hand. You felt John stiffen next to you. 

 

Everything after that happened very quickly. The little girl wriggled free of her father’s grip and went to hide behind Gamzee’s legs. He let go of the dog, yelling at nobody and everybody. The dog bolted, charging at John, who in turn ran as fast as he could in the other direction. You didn’t really think, just dove for the manic dog before it could do any real damage. You lay there, on top of the dog, not totally sure what ought to happen next. The man, of course, looked fucking livid at everything that was happening around him. Gamzee had knelt down to the little girls height, and was muttering something. It apparently was helping. He pinched her nose gently, making a honking noise. She giggled and went waddling back to the guy. He grabbed her hand with ten times the force than before. You wormed your way off the barking piece of death, tugging it over to the man. He snatched the choker chain out of your hand and went stalking off, dog and girl in tow.

“Fuckass,” Karkat mumbled under his breath. Terezi laughed a little, and everyone stalked off in different directions. You turned around to look for John, who was nowhere to be seen. 

“The dog’s gone, dude,” you called out. No response. 

 

Shit. 

 

You wandered around the camp, trying to figure where the fuck he could be. You eventually found him slumped behind Jack’s RV, wheezing and coughing. 

“Are you...” you awkwardly trailed off. He looked up at you, but there wasn’t much he could see. His glasses had fogged up. It took you way too long to process what was happening. 

“Are you having an asthma attack?” you asked incredulously. He nodded, and kept wheezing. You felt yourself start to panic a little. 

“Shit, wait here,” you said, turning around quickly. Jack had a first aid kit in his office, right?You kicked the door open, walked in without knocking, grabbed the first aid kit without an explanation and left, closing the door on your way out. You’d basically signed your death certificate, but oh well. You plonked yourself down next to John, and started rifling through the first aid container. It was badly organised, but you eventually came across what you thought was an inhaler. 

“Yesssss,” you said quietly under your breath. You held it out to him. He looked at you, looked at the inhaler, looked back to you, and suspiciously took the thing. He breathed it in. A little while later, you saw the colour return to his cheeks. 

“Thanks,” he said quietly, holding the inhaler out to you. 

“No problem. That dog was fuckin vicious,” you said, wiping it down and returning it to the chaotic first aid kit. John just laughed shakily, leaning into you. You wrapped your arm around his shoulders, leaning your head on top of his. 

“Shit man, two Egbert hugs in one day?” you said quietly, “It’s like fuckin’ christmas up in here.” 

“Ho ho ho,” John said quietly, snuggling closer to you. 

“The fuck did you just call me?” you asked, in mock offense. John laughed. He laughed a lot. He laughed so hard you were worried he’d have another attack. Fuck, he was cute when he laughed; the harsh rise and fall of his tiny stomach, and the way he just sort of stretched out his body to make room for more laughing and oh shit you were in love. You had the hots for this kid.

 

You had ‘em bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoiler alert the girl was Jane and the dog was Bec


	5. The Sunrise Suite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took too long and I don't really have an explanation.
> 
> Sorry. 
> 
> Thanks for waiting, and I'll REALLY REALLY try to upload more regularly but I go off on Exam leave in 2 days so idk.

Right after John had calmed down, going off to talk to Karkat or someone about something, you hightailed it off to the most dependable person you could think of for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, that person just so happened to be Rose. 

~ 

“Fuck off,” you grumbled into your hands for the fifth time. You were lying on the ground, she was perched on a barrel. 

“I’m simply saying that you’ve never needed _romantic_ advice until now, so I was wondering who the object of your misplaced affection was,” she said sweetly. 

“Look, I’m just wondering what you do when you date,” you said, fiddling with a piercing, “y’know, with Kanaya and stuff.” 

Rose stiffened slightly, “How did you know about that?” You grinned at her, but it probably came off as more of a smirk. 

“Seriously? It’s pretty obvious. More obvious than a homophobe at a pride parade, yellin’ about how women shouldn’t wear pants and shit. Hell, it’s practically a-” 

“Is it John?” she asked sweetly. 

“I’m in the middle of something here, Lalonde,” you said. 

“So it is.” 

“You interrupted my flow. That shit’s ruder than a-” 

“You should tell him,” she said, completely ignoring you. 

“Fuck no,” you replied, recoiling a little. She raised her eyebrows. 

“Look, the way I see it is that you can’t just pretend you don’t have feelings for him and carry on as is,” she started. 

“Obvious enough,” you conceded. 

“So your two options are just tell him, or ignore him for indefinite amounts of time,” she said with a shrug, “It’s your choice.” 

The choice was obvious. 

~

The next few days were some of the worst you’d ever had to endure. As soon as you’d accepted that you were in love with John, you avoided him like the plague. He’d wave you over and you’d act like Aradia was trying to tell you something, and force a conversation with her until John had gone. You started sharing a bed roll with Terezi, letting him have yours. You would force yourself to hang around Karkat (even if it was like pulling teeth) so John couldn’t get you alone. 

“You’re being very rude, Dave,” Terezi would frequently tell you with a sour expression. 

“It’s better than the alternative,” you would grumble back, always too quiet for her to hear, even with her freakishly good ears. John was your friend. He was your best friend, and he was so fucking oblivious and he didn’t deserve someone who was head over heels in love with him pining after him. You just had to keep your distance and PRAY that he made other friends. 

The problem was, you were his best friend. He was yours. You were pretty sure that you were his ONLY friend. _It was fine,_ you’d tell yourself, _John could make other friends. Everyone loved him. Everyone else is also years his senior_ , you’d remind yourself. _Doesn’t mean they can’t be friends_ , you’d tell yourself firmly. _But it won’t be the right flavour of friend_ , you’d counter. God, you hated it when you were some semblance of right.  

He, of course, got on with everyone. Vriska loved him. Nepeta loved him. You were pretty sure that Terezi was getting the paperwork together to adopt the kid. Everyone liked John. John liked everyone. So why did he keep trying to come and talk to you? He’d always bound over to you like some sorta excited puppy, already babbling something about “you won’t BELIEVE what just happened”, or “Tavros got stuck in a tree! How the hell?” or (increasingly often) “Hey Dave! Long time no see!”. You’d nod and act like you had something important to do, bustling off without a word. It couldn’t get worse than this, you assured yourself. 

It did. 

One day, he just stopped. You were slightly relieved, if mildly worried. Why did he stop? Did he hate you? Was he mad at you? Was he okay? Did he die? Oh god he probably died and thought that you still hated him but really it was just because of your own complete and utter ineptitude and oh wait never mind there he was. He was just there, chilling with Vriska, sitting on the benches you usually ate at. He was laughing his stupid adorable laugh, his hair shifting and catching the thin morning sun, his eyes squeezed shut against the laughter tears that squeezed out of his eyes. 

Were you staring? You were staring. You couldn’t help but stare. 

And there was something else stewing in the pit of your stomach. A strange, angry feeling, like you were furious at something, but couldn’t quite work out what. You noticed Vriska touch his shoulder and holy shit no fucking way were you jealous. You were jealous. You were getting all protective of this boy that you’d driven away and now that he’d finally found someone to chill with you were getting jealous. Ugh. Everything was terrible. What if you just fucking went over there and asked him out? Yeah, that would go great. Perfect.  

You gathered yourself to go over, but before you knew it John was bounding his way over to you, wiping the tears out from under his eyes. 

“Hey, Dave!” he chirped, beaming at you, “Long time no see, huh.” You felt a pang of guilt.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” you said, smirking a little, “Just wasn’t feeling so great.”

“Aw,” he said, like it didn’t really make any sense, but he was sorry for you nonetheless, “that sucks.” 

“Yeah,” you agreed. There was a silence that was just long enough to be awkward, but not quite long enough to be comfortable. 

“I’m really sorry, John,” you said quietly after a while. He looked like he understood for a while, but suddenly decided to play dumb. 

“For what? It’s fine, Dave!” he chirped. You laughed a little, glancing away guiltily. 

“Yeah. A’ight,” you said, “so we’re cool?” 

“Of course!” John replied, nudging you a little, “you’re my best friend, Dave.”

“Sick,” you grinned, fishing for something else to say, “apparently we’re headed for California.” 

“Shake state,” John agreed. You stopped. 

“What the fuck?” you asked for clarification. 

“Shake state,” John said, like it was obvious, “Y’know, with all the earthquakes and stuff. The state that shakes.” 

“Shake state.” 

“Shake state,” he confirmed. There was a pause. 

“Okay, I’m not even going to lie. That’s hella fun to say. Shake state.” 

“Shake state.” 

“Shitty Shake state,” you tried. 

“Super Shitty Shake State,” John countered. You rolled the words around in your head a little.  

“Super Shaking Shit State.” 

“Swanky Shake state that’s super shit.”

“Damn. Sick Swanky State that Shakes supplying super shit.” 

“Show off,” John said, wrinkling his nose. 

“Shake State shows off sick super shit to be supplied to swanky state,” You grinned. He laughed. 

“Fine fine, you win,” he said, putting up his hands. 

“I can keep going,” you said, bouncing your knees a little, “Several su-” 

“Shhhhhhhhh,” John interrupted, pressing his hand to your face. You laughed. God, you'd miss this. Why'd you ever stop?

You wanted to just take that hand. 

You wanted to take his hand, and press his knuckles to your lips. 

Take his hand in yours, take the other one, stare into his blue eyes for years and years. 

You wanted to kiss him. God, you wanted to kiss him so fucking badly. But-

You squirmed out of his grip, something a little like guilt and a little like disappointment and a lot like frustration threatening to fill your chest to bursting. 

“Dave?” John asked. He sounded so...disappointed. Like you were turning a knife between his ribs. 

“C’mon man,” you joked, knowing that you sounded shakier than usual, “personal bubble.”

“No such thing!” John yelled, flinging himself at you. You staggered under his weight, collapsing onto the soft ground. You laughed, but it hurt. You’d missed this. 

“Dude c’mon,” you grumbled, trying to pry him off you. 

“Nope!” John yelled, going limp, “Tap out, Dave. Tap out!” 

“Hell no!” you replied, wriggling defiantly, “you’re heavier than a-”

“Get up,” someone growled from very close by. John and you scrambled to your feet, finding yourselves extremely close to an extremely pissed off Jack. 

“We’re gone,” he said, turning on his heels, “headed for-” 

“Shake State,” you whispered to John.

“Louisiana,” Jack finished. 

“What?” You asked before you could stop yourself. Jack looked at you like you were insane. 

“We’re headed to Louisiana,” Jack said for clarification, clearly getting pissed at you. 

“That’s in the opposite direction of where we’re headed,” you pointed out. He took a menacing step towards you. 

“Look, kid,” Jack spat, his voice rising a little. 

“JACK!” Vriska yelled, “WHAT DO YOU WANT DONE WITH THIS?” Jack growled a little, turning on his heels and yelling indistinctly ad Vriska. John let out a small sigh of relief. 

“Guess we’re not going to the shake state,” he said, letting out a breathy laugh. 

“Tragedy,” you agreed. He glanced up at you, grinning a little, and moving on. 

You two ended up in different trucks. This was a relief of sorts, and absolute torture in other ways. You ended up doing nothing but talking about John for the whole thirteen hours to whoever was driving. You couldn’t even claim that this was ironic. Rose finally snapped at around the twelfth hour, yelling something about how you had obviously been surprising feelings for a long time and how this was evidence of blah blah blah. You stopped listening pretty quickly. 

~ 

It was late when you finally found wherever it was that Jack had dragged you to, and the stars would have been out if not for the light pollution. Normally, everyone would have started setting up the tent and unloading the lion and setting up the eating area, but everyone was so travel fatigued that they went straight to bed. You made a bee-line for Terezi, but John grabbed the sleeve of your jacket before you could get very far. Wordlessly, he dragged you along until you were a little way aways from the group, in the shadow of a stunted tree. You felt worry stew in the pit of your stomach. 

“John?” you asked quietly. He still had one hand on your wrist, holding you there like he was afraid to let you go. Like if he let you go, you’d run off and be gone forever. 

“Do you have a crush on me, Dave?” John asked, turning to look at you. He seemed so...casual about it. It was like the breath had been knocked from your body. 

“What?” was all you could ask. He looked almost disappointed, but it was hard to tell in the dim light. 

“That’s what Vriska said,” he said, laughing humorlessly, “See, Rose told Kanaya, who told Karkat, who told Terezi, who told Nepeta, who told Equius, who told Vriska, who told me.” 

“What?”

“Dave, c’mon, please,” John’s voice cracked a little. He cleared his throat, fighting for control, “I’m just trying to work out why you started hating me!” 

“John, I never-” you started, but you stopped, seeing the look on his face. It was fucking obvious. You’d shut him out, and avoided him, and all other kinds of crap. You just stared at him, mouth slightly agape. You didn’t want this. You didn’t want to love him like you did and you didn’t want him thinking that he’d done anything wrong and you just wanted to be friends again. 

That wasn’t an option.  

He had to know. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anything he’d done, or said. It was all just you, and your fucking inability to socialize. You nodded. He just sighed, gently letting go of your wrist. 

“So why’d you stop talking to me?” he asked, voice soft but with the unmistakable edge of anger. 

“I was...I was worried I’d just fuck up,” was all you could manage, “do something inappropriate. Make you uncomfortable. I dunno. Just...fuck up. I wanted to be your friend, and-” 

“So the best way to keep me as a friend is to shut me off?” John asked, clearly getting more and more angry, "makes TOTAL sense!" 

“I was worried you’d hate me,” you snapped. John looked a little taken aback. 

“I...I wouldn’t have hated you,” he said quietly, “and I’m kinda hurt that you thought I would.” You shrugged a little. 

“Well,” you started, “now you know.” You just sort of crumpled, collapsing onto your ass in the damp grass, “and I’d get it if you didn’t want to be friends or whatever after this.” You pointed your face at the ground. 

“I don’t,” John said gently. You just nodded. Shit. Fucking shit. You’d fucked up. You’d fucked up beyond repair. 

“Dave?” John asked, sitting down in front of you, “I mean, I don’t want to be friends if you don’t want to be friends.” You looked up suddenly at that. John looked so uncertain it made your heart melt a little. 

“Why would I not wanna be friends?” you asked, getting the feeling that maybe you’d missed something important.  
“Well, I dunno,” John said, picking at a loose thread on his shirt, “maybe you wanted to...I dunno. More than.” 

“More than what?” 

“Friends.” 

 

Your heart fucking stopped.

 

“What?” was all you found yourself able to say. 

“I dunno, I just, y’know, I uh, ditto,” he mumbled.

"What?"

“I like you back.” 

“Vriska?” you asked slowly. John laughed then, a classic Egbert laugh. 

“Are you kidding? She’s like, twice my age!” he giggled. You just blinked. He sighed, smiling at you. 

“Look, I like you. Like, _like_ like you. And I thought maybe we could try or something,” even in the dark, you caught the slight heat that sprung to his face. God he was adorable. You just nodded, slack jawed. 

“Yeah,” your voice came out higher than you’d bargained for. John laughed at you, getting to his feet and offering out his hands. You pulled yourself up, finding your mind unfortunately blank and your mouth unfortunately open. John just wrinkled his nose. 

“Dave. exe has crashed,” he laughed. 

“You bet,” you said quietly, “Don’t even bother trying to reboot Dave.exe. It’s software’s out of date. Needs a new model and some new ass software. Super new software. State of the art fancy Apple software, designed in the mountains of-” 

“Rambling,” John said gently, dragging you back to where everyone else was already asleep. 

On auto pilot now, you just lay down on the bedroll on your side, letting John gently press your face into his chest. He was wrapped around the top half of you, feet tangling around your knees and his cheek resting on the crown of your head. You just sort of fisted your hand in the back of his shirt, digging your face into his sternum. You still had your glasses on, and this probably hurt like a bitch, but he didn't seem to care. He gently carded one set of fingers through your hair, stroking you in a way that should have been awkward but instead was incredibly comforting, your hand starting to uncurl from the fabric of his shirt.

“Thanks,” you mumbled into his chest. 

“No problem,” he whispered, “good night, Dave.”  

It was the best sleep you’d had in a long ass time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited it a little from when i first uploaded it
> 
> gotta stop writing stuff at ass o'clock in the morning
> 
> (Also changed the chapter's name you're not going crazy)


	6. The Lightfooted March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff..?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should honestly just stop even apologising for how late I am. I wrestled with this chapter for a long ass time and it's going up at 3:30 am, so there are probably lots of typos. Anyway, enjoy!

You woke up the next morning, vaguely disoriented and surrounded by the sounds of sniggers. Jesus, it was warm. Why were you warm? You never woke up warm. It was freezing and Jack was too fucking cheap for even a god damn tarp to keep the rain and show and shit off you. The closest thing you got to warm were the places that John pressed up against you, which _ought_ to be your back and shoulders and shit. On top of that, who the _fuck_ was laughing so hard? You elected to ignore it, choosing instead to curl up and go back to sleep. You flopped over onto your side, and were immediately attacked by a surprisingly sharp something. Your eyes snapped open, and  the first thing you saw was a large pile of stark black hair.  

What.

You were wrapped around John. He was wrapped around you. The tips of his hair was tickling the underside of your chin whilst his face was squished against your shoulder. His arms had weaved their way around your chest, keeping you firmly in place. Your arms had moved from the unsuccessful rolling-over (right, you were still crushing John with what little mass you had. Better roll back.), so you had no idea what scandalous position you two had fallen asleep in. John was a ridiculously heavy sleeper, and just sort of snuggled closer into your armpit. 

“Gross,” you muttered under your breath. You were a little irked at how tender it’d sounded. 

“You two ARE gross,” came a slightly pissed off (but mostly extremely entertained) voice from above you. How did this happen? 

It came trickling back slowly, and with every new detail you remembered you stomach got more achey. You told John you liked him. Holy shit why did you do that? What possible reason could you have for doing that? Right, an explanation. You felt the guilt soak through you again. Dick move, generally. And then he’d said something. More than friends?  

Fuck

What now? Were you dating? Were you boyfriends? You’d technically slept together. Technically. That meant you were boyfriends, right? Did you want to be boyfriends? Did he want to be boyfriends? Shit you hadn’t even asked him out properly. Fuck. Fuck. 

Karkat was still laughing, and it was really pissing you off. You also, unfortunately, had a sleeping John on you, and moving was likely to wake him up. This was not, necessarily, something you wanted to happen. It was like moving when a small dog had fallen asleep in your lap. It was the unspoken rule that you should not move, and if you moved, you were essentially satan. However, Karkat was really pissing you off. You awkwardly threw out your leg in a poor attempt to kick him in his crotch. Tragically, you merely knee-capped him. It had the same effect, and he went down cursing. 

“Shut your fucking mouth,” you mumbled. Shit, you’d meant for that to be a lot more aggressive. A flash went off somewhere near your face. You blinked up blearily at Terezi, who was cackling silently. 

“What the fuck are you doing, TZ?” you grumbled. 

“Karkat said you and the Janitor-” 

“John.” 

“Whatever! The point is he said you two are cuddled up all cute and disgusting,” she shook the camera, grinning, “I’m documenting it!” 

“You’re blind, TZ,” you said, like she’d forgotten this, “How do you know Karkat’s not lying?”

It was at that point that John decided to let out an extremely poorly timed (and mildly adorable) snore, mumbling something about how squirmy you are. Terezi laughed loudly, and the flash went off again. 

“Terezi, c’mon. They’re probably blurry and shit,” you said, starting to sit up. Egbert be damned, this was your dignity at stake. You made a lunge for the camera, but Terezi managed to predict it, artfully dodging you. You heard John grumble behind you, curling up against the cold. 

“Awww, Davey, I didn’t know you cared THIS much about the reputation of your blushing janitor bride!” she crooned. 

“I’m doing this for _your_ own good, TZ,” you scowled, “I mean, once folks see what a shitty fucking photographer you are, you’ll be so embarrassed-” you lunge, she dodges, “-that you’ll have to go into hiding like a creepy old hermit or some shit-” lunge, dodge, “-and people will be all ‘Where’s Terezi, the shittiest photographer ever?’ And that’s how you’ll go down-” lunge, dodge, “in history. Terezi the missing worst photographer of all time. What a way to go.” 

“Rambling,” John says. You glance over, catching him rubbing at his eyes with the most precious ‘I just woke up face’ you’d ever seen. You felt your cheeks warm up. Shit. It didn’t matter. She was blind. Its not like she’d be able to tell. Karkat yelled something in vietnamese, and Terezi’s face lit up like a christmas tree that had been doused in gasoline around a careless smoker. 

“YOU’RE BLUSHING?” she screamed, attempting to both avoid you (why was she so good at this) and take a picture at the same time. 

“No” you said defensively 

“He SO is!” John giggled. 

“Fuck off, John!” you snapped. He put his hands up in semi-surrender. 

 

You spun back around, only to nearly run directly into Nepeta. She was grinning up a you expectantly. 

“Nepeta would like to know what all the yelling is about,” she said, sweetly. 

“It’s actually none of Nep-” you started. 

“DAVE’S BONING THE JANITOR!” Karkat interrupted. 

“Technically we didn’t _bone_ ,” John said, making a face. It was lost under Nepeta’s screaming. She grabbed Terezi by the shoulders, shaking her a little. Terezi, amazingly, just grinned back. She turned in Karkat’s general direction screaming, and tackled you to the ground. Still screaming. 

“EQUIUS OWES ME FIFTY DOLLARS!” she squealed, “I CAN’T BELIEVE MY OTP IS CANNON!” 

“Your O-T-what?” John asked.

“I personally do not give a shit,” you said, wriggling in Nepeta’s grip, “John. Remove the screaming Russian lady.” John just laughed, shaking his head. 

 

“Why does Equius owe you fifty dollars?” came a concerned voice from the distance. Nepeta released you and jumped to her feet in astounding time. 

“JOHN AND DAVE ARE FUCKING EACH OTHER!” she yelled. 

“We didn’t fuck!” John cried. 

“DAVE AND _WHO_ FUCKED?” Equius yelled. Why the fuck was he so far away. What could he possibly be doing so fucking far away. 

“DAVE. AND-” Nepeta was cut short by a very sudden rock thrown at her head. She rubbed the point of impact, looking at Karkat (the culprit) more than a little annoyed. Karkat nodded his head at Jack, who had emerged from his shitty trailer. She paled. 

“UM. TEREZI,” she yelled back. Terezi opened her mouth, gathering up the breath for a monstrous holler, but Nepeta shut her up. 

“WHAT?” Equius yelled, his enormous figure coming into view. 

“I agree, what?” you asked, finally getting up. Nepeta just nodded her head towards Jack. The pieces didn’t seem to click. John got it, though. 

“Shit, really?” he asked, eyes wide. 

 

“I am missing something,” you said. Nepeta looked at you like you were speaking another language. 

“It’s Jack,” was all she said. 

“He’s an asshole,” Karkat filled in, nodding slowly. You just kept giving them blank stares. 

“Once we had this guy with us who could build these beautiful, intricate puppets. You could hardly see the strings,” Terezi started, “Jack never even yelled at him. I’m pretty sure that he was his favourite.” 

“And then one day he fell in love with some guy in the audience. Jack caught them together and kicked him out of the circus,” Nepeta ended sadly. You still weren’t following. 

“He’s a raging homophobic cunt,” Karkat supplied for you. 

“Ah,” you said quietly. Fantastic. You forgot sometimes that you grew up in the bible belt. That would make this much more complicated. You glanced over at John, who just sort of shrugged in your direction. 

“Welp, what’re you gonna do?” he said, nonchalantly. You just blinked at him. 

“I could get you thrown out of this...whatever it is. You’d be homeless,” you said, just to make sure that the stakes were clear here. 

“Well, the same goes for you! It’s not like _you’re_ gonna break up with me over this!” he said cheerfully. His face fell a little, uncertainty etched into his eyes. 

“Are you?” he asked, for clarification. 

“Fuck no,” you said shaking your head, “are you?”

“God no!” he said, recoiling. You couldn’t help the smile that crept to your face. 

“Cool,” you mumbled. A flash went off in your peripheral vision. You turned with a sigh. 

“TZ, you can’t even-” you stopped short. The camera was in Nepeta’s hands. 

“Did it come out okay?” Terezi asked. 

“Yeah! Wow, you can even see the blush!” Nepeta replied, grinning. You just stared. 

“Dave.exe has crashed!” John said, getting up and dusting himself down. You just turned on your heels, heading for the nearest tree, climbing up and hanging limply over a low hanging branch. You heard them laughing behind you, but at least they were laughing with you this time. 

 

~

 

A little while later (after the rumors had circled quietly around the group), whilst you were setting up for a show, John came and perched on a seat nearby. 

“Hey Dave?” John asked quietly. Shit, that was never a good sign. 

“Yeah?” you asked. You mentally congratulated yourself for how cooly you played that off.

“What...are we?” he asked, like he was walking on eggshells. 

“Well, that’s up to you,” you said, grinning to yourself, “I mean, are we human? Or are we dancer?” John laughed a little, but it wasn’t his normal laugh. It was quiet. Almost fragile. Made out of breath and wind chimes. 

“C’mon, man, I’m being serious,” he said, kicking you gently. 

“So was I,” you said, turning to him. You’d seen this conversation coming a mile away, and had managed to come up with a smooth way of putting it.

“I-” 

“John, look,” you started, “If you wanna be, I dunno, friends with benefits or whatever, then fine. If you wanna be ‘dating but not official’, also fine. Boyfriends, totally fine.” You forced a smile, reaching out to touch his face, but pulling back last minute to rest it on his shoulder, “we’ll take it as far as you wanna take it.” He grinned at you, his buckteeth sticking forward in all their glory. 

“I don’t want to be the guy calling the shots here, Dave,” he said, placing one hand over yours, “I don’t wanna be the person who’s like ‘this is what we are and you don’t get a say in it’. I get the feeling that people don’t ask you this much, but, well, what do _you_ want?” You blinked a little. He was right. People never asked you that. You don’t remember the last time someone asked you that. 

“I,” you started slowly, “in an ideal world, would be your boyfriend. But if you don’t want to be boyfriends then that’s chill as well man I just don-” You were shut up by the grin slowly seeping over John’s face.

“Oh thank god,” he said, dropping his head a little, “I thought you were...y’know. Backing out or something.” You didn’t have anything to say to that, so you just wiggled your thumb so it was on top of his hand, stroking it gently. 

“There was something else I had to tell you, Dave,” he started, looking almost guilty. Your heart dropped. 

“Shoot,” you mumbled. Not nearly as cool as earlier. He opened his mouth, and you were suddenly being dragged away by the back of your shirt. 

 

“You’re late,” Aradia hissed in your ear. You heard Rose doing her apology for her shitty english. So not late. 

“I was talking to John,” you grumbled back. 

“Talk to your boyfriend in your own time!” she hissed back. 

“He’s n-” you stopped yourself. He was totally your boyfriend. Why were you denying it? Force of habit. 

“Anyway, he was about to say s-” you started again, but she ignored you. 

“Cry me a river, just do it silently,” she interrupted. Your moth shut with an audible snap.

“Fine. Silent,” you said, “I can do that. You are going to get the best god damn silent treatment I have to offer. This shit’s was more quiet than a mute kid in a Prius fill of introverts. Why a Prius, you ask? That engine’s so quiet, it’s like some sorta stealth machine, it’s like...” you ran out of things to say 

“It could have been important,” you said, getting bored with your own train of thought. 

“Oh do be quiet,” Rose said, coming offstage, “he was probably merely getting ready to tell you about his asexuality.” You opened your mouth to ask about whether that meant John was now a single cell organism. 

“If you say anything along the lines of ‘does that mean john is an amoeba’, I’m making you break up with him,” Terezi said, patting you on the back as she walked out past you. 

“Wait, how many of you know about this?” you asked, as quietly as you could. 

“Almost everyone,” Aradia shrugged. 

“But I don’t even know what tha-” you started

“He was probably worried about him hurting his chances with you,” she hissed. That made you shut up. John was asexual? What did that mean? Why did it hurt his chances with you? Why _might_ it have hurt his chances with you? Was John sick? Was he okay? Would he be okay? Why were you so worried? There wasn’t any real reason to be worried, was there? 

 

Still, you’d remained completely distracted, nearly catching fire a couple times during the show. You made it out with both your eyebrows, and immediately started looking for John. You found him sitting, watching the show through the little hole in the curtain, that same dorky grin on his face. You couldn’t help but smile along with him. 

“Hey,” you said quietly. He jumped a little, but broke into a smile as soon as he saw it was you. 

“Hiya!” he chirped. An uncomfortable pause sat between you. 

“D’you wanna maybe, go for a romantic walk through the park?” you offered, gesturing over your shoulder. John obviously saw through your thinly constructed ruse, but agreed none the less, grabbing your hand and pulling you away. 

 

~

 

It was way too fucking cold. The sky was clear, but you two saw very few stars, and you remembered why you’d hated the city so much. You explained to John, in excruciating detail, whilst you walked and he swung your hands. 

“Rambling,” he pointed out eventually, digging a finger into your side. You curved around him, nearly loosing your balance and taking both of you down. You cursed loudly at him, and you two eventually came to a stop near a little bridge over a little stream. There was a huge tree arching above it, bent like the back of a wizened old wizard. Its huge trunk was oddly comfortable to lean against, so you and John ,agreeing it was way too late to climb and you’d probably fall again (“that was ONE TIME, Egbert.”) sat on the damp grass and watched the river flow. 

“Hey John?” you asked almost instantly, glancing over at his outline in the fading light, “what does asexual mean?” John deflated a little, looking over at you. 

“Rose told you, huh?” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. 

“I was kinda complaining about how Aradia dragged me away from our vitally important conversation at a crucial point kinda loudly whilst she was on stage. I get the feeling she was kinda pissed at me.” 

“Okay,” John said, choosing to look at the river instead of you, heaving a large sigh, “so, like, you know how you see a hot guy or whatever and you’re like ‘damn I wanna get in his pants’, right?” 

“Aw Egbert, you know me so well,” you smirked, squeezing his hand (which was still tightly wound around yours) 

“Right, well, I don’t? I just don’t see people as...sexy,” he said, looking back over at you. You were too distracted by how uncertain he looked to pay much attention to his words. When you finally managed to process it, you weren’t terribly sure what bearing this had on anything. 

“Okay...?” you asked, in the same tone of voice a rebellious child might say ‘so?’ to an observation made about their mistakes. John just blinked at you. 

“You know this means no sex, right? Or, at least, extremely limited sex,” he said, like you were an idiot. You scoffed, taking his other hand. 

“Now John, I know I give off the air that I’m some big ass, testosterone filled monster with an enormous libido. Y’know, the kinda guy who jacks it ten times a day,” you said, very seriously. John giggled, trying to pull away. 

“Ew, Dave!” he laughed. You held onto him firmly. 

“I mean, walking down the street, you’d probably see me and say ‘damn, that guy probably needs several hours of sexual gratification every single day from multiple different beautiful women,” you went on. John managed to wrench his wrists free of your hands, but you just wrapped your arms around his waist, pulling him into you. Anyone else would have walked past and seen a lovey-dovey couple.

“Hell, I’ve had men come up to me and shake my hand, congratulating me on my massive schlong,” you mumbled into his ear. John gave up, slumping weakly against you. 

“Do you have a point to any of this Dave?” he asked, trying to glare at you but instead succumbing to the giggles. You grinned, allowing him to push your shades up into your hair. 

“There are better things than sex, John,” maneuvering yourself so that you could look at him easier. His cheek was resting against your bicep, cutting off the blood to your arm. You didn’t mind much. Your fingers traced little circles in his back, testing the water. He awkwardly brought up his hand to your face, stroking your cheek gently, just hints of contact. When you made no sign that this was an unwelcome contact, he lay his palm flat against your cheek, fingers positioned _just_ right to fiddle slightly with your earrings. 

“Better things like what?” he asked, grinning like the goof he was. You felt the heat spring to your cheeks. 

“You,” you said. John’s face lit up, and he turned bright red, Hiding his face in your shoulder. 

“You’re so cheesy!” came his muffled protest. 

“I’m sorry man that was so smooth. High five me,” you said, lifting up the hand still on your face so that it stood at a right angle, and awkwardly catching a high five. John glared up at you, but his face was so red that it lost its effect. You smirked down at him, suddenly aware of how close your faces were. Your heart raced, and the cold faded away. You leaned down slightly, minutely, testing the waters. He grinned up at you, closing the gap, and pressing your lips together. 

You assume that you must not have been very nice to kiss, seeing as your lips were chapped and you had no idea what you were doing. John was, on the other hand, wonderful. His lips were soft, and sweet, and you’re not sure if he actually tasted like peaches of if you just imagined it. Either way, it didn’t matter, because from the way he gently rested his hand at the point where your skull met your neck to the quiet, almost unnoticeable twitching of his lips, he was perfect. 

Perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ace John is my life I'll fight you ALL on this.


	7. The Beta Sonnata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's Mystery is solved

“NO. IF YOU DO ANY SUCH THING, I WILL TAKE WHATEVER LIMITED, RUSTY ASS MEDICAL EQUIPMENT WE HAVE AND TAKE A GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING PAGE OUT OF THE NAZI’S BOOKS, AND _SURGICALLY, PAINFULLY END_ YOU,” came Jack’s muffled screaming from within the trailer. 

“Vriska’s Jewish?” John whispered to you from his hiding place behind a large oil drum. 

“The Nazis took out Romanis as well, man,” you said with a shrug. He nodded, waiting to see what else happened. 

It was a Tuesday, and slower than usual. Obviously, you and everyone else in the circus quickly ran out of things to do, and decided to play your most dangerous game, “piss Jack the fuck off”. It involved each of you, one by one, going into his trailer and saying whatever you could to get him to blow his top. The person who went last, obviously, was at an advantage over the others (seeing how Jack’s patience had already been stretched fairly thinly), so if you went first you got a base score of 12 points, if you went second you got a base score of 11, and so on and so on. The other points were awarded based on how racist, sexist, and/or homophobic his reply was, along with anything that got broken or physical harm that occurred in the process. 

The door to the trailer swung open and Vriska calmly walked out, making a bee-line for the table where Gamzee (in a rare spell of pure mental equilibrium) and anyone who’d gone before her sat, Gamzee being the judge. 

“Well, you got him to make a reference to the literal motherfuckin’ Nazis,” he said, scratching the back of his neck, “so that’s worth at least fifty big ones.” 

“Fifty plus three, that’s fifty four points, putting you _just_ behind...” Rose said, looking down at the crudely drawn table. 

“Uh...me, right?” Tavros said, grinning a little. Vriska threw her hands in the air, plonking herself down on the bench. 

“I still think it’s absolute bullshit that that wheelchair of his counts as part of his body,” she hissed. Tavros shrugged, looking rarely smug. 

 

“My turn!” Terezi chirped, clambering over the rusty old cage containing the complacent Lion (Nepeta was worried he was getting sick). She went over, and politely knocked on the door. 

“WHAT THE FUCK COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT?” came Jack’s furious response. 

“I have something important to talk to you about!” Terezi chirped earnestly. Jack growled, and Terezi took this as a sign to enter. She immediately started babbling in vietnamese, very quickly and fairly loudly. Jack demanded (several times) that she start speaking English, before screaming wordlessly out of frustration. There was a loud crash as he threw whatever books he had against the metal wall. Terezi opened the door, speed walking over to the table. 

“Not bad, TZ, not bad. He didn’t actually say anything racist,” Gamzee started. 

“He called Vietnamese the ching chong language!” Karkat said, gesturing to the trailer. 

“True, true. Thirty, then,” Gamzee said, nodding sagely. 

“Thirty plus two, that’s thirty two.” 

“Respectable,” John nodded. 

 

That just left you. You never usually won these things, seeing as how Gamzee didn’t like you much, but it was always worth a shot. You gave Jack a little time to calm down before confidently marching in. Jack didn’t even look up from whatever he was scribbling down. 

“Hey,” you said, trying to get his attention. Shit, you really should’ve thought about this before hand. 

“Ahem,” you said. 

“I get that this is some bullshit game you and the other freaks play,” he said, “and I’m not gonna play into your hands any longer.” Damn. That was a freaking challenge. You casually strolled over, quietly taking one of the pages on the far side of his desk. It didn’t make much sense, something about pounds of Me-something something, and the cost of it all? Damn, this dyslexia probably would have made this a lot more interesting. 

“Hey jack?” you started, “why are we spending two thousand dollars a month on meth...eelam..ine?” There was a heavy pause. Jack stood up slowly. 

“What did you just ask?” he said quietly. 

“Meth-ee-lam-ine? What is it and why are w-” you started. You were interrupted by an almost guttural snarl, and the sound of something smashing. You looked over your shoulder at where the window used to be. Now, there was just a rim of glass shards. You turned back to Jack, who was standing now, and ripping the paper out of your hands. You barely managed to hold back a laugh. 

“Did you just break your own window?” you asked, backing up nervously, “Dude, wh-” 

 

Sometimes, underestimating someone is the biggest mistake you can make. Underestimating Jack was a huge fucking mistake. Underestimating what, exactly, you can’t pinpoint, but when he lifted you clean off your feet by nothing but your shirt, you felt this enormous sense of having missed something key. 

“Why are you so interested, huh?” he all but yelled, shaking you a little. You felt panic start to rise in your chest, pushing outwards. 

“Hey, c’mon, chill out,” you said, somehow managing to keep your voice calm, “It’s a game man, c’mon.” Jack gave a wordless shout, hurling you out of the window. You landed painfully, jarringly on your neck, and lay there for a while, groaning a little. That was going to hurt in the morning. Jack, evidently wasn’t finished, bursting out of his “office” with a-holy shit. Holy shit that was a pistol. 

“YOU A FUCKING COP?” he spat, firing uncomfortably close to your feet. It was the noise that startled you more than anything. You scrambled backwards, trying to remember how to breathe. Fuck he wasn’t going to kill you over this, was he? 

At least you’d win this round of “piss Jack the fuck off”, some small part of your brain said. 

Luckily, your rescuer came in the form of a 6”11 sweating Russian man, who pried the gun out of Jack’s hands. Jack whirled around, immediately yelling something about police and invasion of privacy or something. You just sat there in a daze, watching Equius gesticulate at you. 

“You think _that_ is a policeman?” Equius said quietly, gesturing to you. Jack whirled around, glancing over you. 

“Yes,” he said, but this time he said it like he’d realized how stupid such an accusation was. 

“Of course,” Equius said, nodding solemnly. 

“Why else would he be so curious about my...business, huh?” he asked. Equius shrugged. 

“He’s an annoying young man who likes to ask questions that don’t have answers,” he offered. Jack glowered at him, snatching the firearm out of his oversized hands and marching back into his shitty trailer. There was a moment of quiet as you shakily got to your feet, turning around. Terezi had gotten to her feet, whispering to Karkat (who was holding her back by the back of her shirt) about something. Vriska looked very un-vriska, looking on with a sort of grim interest. John, of course, looked worried as anything, the god damn motherhen that he was. Gamzee nodded to himself quietly. 

“Dave wins,” was all he said. Tavros threw up his hands, but there was really not much of a contest. You went over, sitting down next to John. 

“You okay?” he asked quietly. You gave him a wide, completely fake, smile. He rolled his eyes, nudging you a little. 

“Okay, I NEED to know what that instant win formula was,” Terezi grinned, leaning over the table. You reached out, tilting her slightly so she was actually facing you. 

“He had all these...papers on his desk,” you said, swallowing and gesturing vaguely, “and one was for like...methylated spirits or methane or, no it was.,” you fished for the words, the syllables, “..uh,” _come on strider you nearly DIED for this information,_ “meth-ee-lam-something something. So I picked it up and naturally I go ‘what is this’ and he lost it. Smashed the window, chucked me out, started firing at me, then-” 

“We were there for that part,” Terezi said, sitting herself down. There was an awkward silence. 

“Congratulations, Dave!” Nepeta chirped. As if they’d all been waiting for her to set them free, everyone dispersed. 

 

~

 

John grabbed your hand, dragging you aggressively away from the trailer. Once you were a little way aways, he softened marginally, glancing over at you through his thick ass glasses. Your chest swelled with affection, and you felt it creep onto your face. 

“Hey,” you said. 

“Hey,” he grinned back. You came to a rest at the trunk of the same tree you’d sat under the night before. It was your go-to tree. You liked having a go-to tree, or you liked the idea of having a go-to tree. You weren’t sure which was which. John sat down first, so naturally you collapsed on top of him. He let out a strangled sort of ‘oof’, but let you do what you would. You shuffled into a less awkward position, with your head resting in his lap. He snorted, carding his hand through your hair. You took his other in yours, running your thumb idly over his knuckles. 

“This okay for you?” you asked, still not totally sure about whether or not John found this sexual. The asexuality thing was going to take some getting used to, but fuck it. John was John. 

“Just as long as you don’t start sucking my dick!” he laughed, poking your nose. 

“No promises,” you muttered, and instantly regretted it. That was overstepping the line, right? It was at least toeing the line, you probably made John all shades of uncomfy there. But he laughed, his big, loud John laugh, and everything was good with the world. 

“You landed pretty hard on your head, y’know,” John said, glancing over you. 

“And yet here I am, shaken but not stirred,” you said, grinning up at him, “I’m motherfucking bomb proof.” He snorted, and you two fell into a silence that you were pretty sure counted as comfortable. 

 

“Hey Dave?” John asked. His voice was quiet, soft, but cut through the silence like a blade. You looked up at him, hoping to catch his eye, but he was more interested in something in the distance. 

“Yeah?” you asked, tilting your head a little. 

“Do you ever wake up with like, residual dreams?” he asked, like he was sharing some of his most intimate secrets, “You don’t quite remember what happened, but you’ll see something or hear something that gives you a weird...deja vu? And you’ll remember a snippet of whatever you were dreaming about, but it just sort of sits there. Alone, without any context?” 

 

What. 

 

“Sure,” you said, “all the time, J-” 

“D’you think you could explain one to me?” he asked, finally looking down at you. You blinked. 

“Well, I’m uh, I’m dressed in red,” you started, feeling the strange half-born dreams, half-baked images come running back at you, “and there’s fire. Dead things in weird jars, and I have a...sword? I think? But it’s broken.” John nodded like this was a very normal thing to say. 

“Not dreams,” he said quietly. 

“What? Not-John, this is weird,” you said, sitting up agitatedly, “You’re freaking me the fuck out, what’s-” 

“I’m telling you what the deal is,” he said, almost pleadingly. His eyes were so wide, and not quite scared just...worried. Guilty. Uncertain.

“I’m trying to tell you why I can’t swim, and why I walked down to Fayetteville from Washington, and why I was so calm under knife point, and all that,” he said, it all coming out in a babbling chaos. You just nodded. He took a deep breath. 

“Those dreams weren’t...dreams, per-say. They were more like memories,” he said, shutting his eyes to try and get his thoughts together. 

John looked so far away from you. 

He sounded a million, million miles away. When did John get so far away? 

“Memories of what?” you asked, shifting marginally closer to him in an effort to bridge the infinite gulf widening underneath you. He gave a dry laugh, completely devoid of humor. 

“Sburb,” he said quietly. 

 

“See, in another life, well, more like an alternate universe, we were playing this video game. It was called Sburb, and we were playing it. Together. You, and me, and Rose and Jade, but you wouldn’t know Jade because I don’t know where she ended up, but my point is, we were playing this game. And this game ended up destroying the universe.” 

“Or our universe, at least, and then we had to try and build a new one. We died. A lot. And we got these like, god-like powers when we died in a certain way. It was really strange. We had these titles and everything. Anyway, we went through the game, going around in circles, and the trolls, er, Vriska and Terezi and Karkat and Nepeta and, well, _everyone_ was there, and we were trying to save the world.” 

“But, well, you CAN’T have a game without a final boss. We had to fight this sort of omnipresent green demon. And uh, you died in the final battle. You all died. By the time we won, I was the only one still standing. That’s how I’m so calm in a stressful situation, y’know? I’ve kinda lived through enough carnage to get through the mild stuff.” 

“And my ‘prize’ for winning was that I got to re-design the world. But, oh my god, I only had a computer with a coding terminal up to do it! And the code was so complicated, I messed a lot of stuff up. I tried to fiddle with History but it just wouldn’t happen. I think I might’ve made stuff WORSE than before!” He looked over at you, the desperation lining his words evident on his face. But you were stuck there. You didn’t know what to do or say. 

“I should have just left it at that. But I couldn’t help myself! I missed you guys so much, and just getting the stupid earth up and running took months! Not that time had any meaning but you get my point, I was really, really lonely.” He sighed, sniffling a little. 

“I started with Karkat. Obviously I fucked that up. He wasn’t really supposed to have a tail or horns or anything. Then Terezi, and Nepeta and the other trolls. I _tried_ to keep you all together, but the location codes were WAY too long to memorize, so you ended up all...scattered.

“I had to bring back my Dad, of course. But he was...wrong. I messed up his coding. He was such a cool guy, but somehow I managed to make him all...uh, angry. He threw stuff a lot. That’s why I ended up in Fayetteville. I was actually looking for you.” 

He sniffled some more, and it was only when the first tear started creeping down his face that the distance became bridgeable. Almost aggressively you pulled him into you, crushing the life out of his little body. He clung back with just as much enthusiasm. 

“I fucked up your code too,” he whispered into the spot where your neck met your shoulder, “You weren’t meant to get stuck with dyslexia, or ADD, or a sucky elder brother, or anything. I tried to fix it, I swear, but-” 

“Some things weren’t meant to be fixed,” you told him gently, running a hand up and down his back, “and y’know, I think I turned out okay.” 

“But-” 

“John, this isn’t your fault,” you said gently, “I mean, you were like, sixteen when all this was happening? You’re allowed to make mistakes. I turned out okay, y’know. Rose did too. Karkat’s happy enough. You did fine, John.” There was a long pause, and eventually you felt the minute trembling in John’s back stop.

“I’m honestly surprised you bought all that,” he said with a slight laugh. 

“If it’s real to you then it doesn’t really matter,” you said with a shrug, “still doesn’t explain why you can’t swim.”

“Oh!” he said, like he’d forgotten the best bit of a funny story, “I actually had to program _myself_ into this world. I just forgot to put the ability to swim into my coding. It was really easy too, just ‘enable dash swimming’.” You snorted, and the snort turned into sniggers, and pretty soon you were doing the weird silent laugh. 

“What?” John asked, pulling away from you slightly. 

“Dude,” you wheezed, “you _literally forgot to swim._ That’s just-” you were unable to continue, and just sat there laughing yourself to death. 

“Oh come off it,” he said, slapping at your arm, “I’m a literal god.” 

 

He let you laugh yourself out for a little while, before you both slipped back into silence. 

“Do you remember any of it?” he asked after a little while. 

“Vaguely,” you shrugged. Since he’d explained it to you, you felt some stuff coming back. You remembered grey people with horns and someone somewhat Terezi-like, and you remembered something about crocodiles. It seemed improbable, and pretty much disproved every religion there was, but whatever. Nobody else really had to know about this. 

“Did we date?” you asked, looking over at him. He shook his head. 

“I was pretty sure you had a thing for Karkat,” he started. 

“Karkat?” you choked out, recoiling. He nodded. 

“Yeah, I think there was certainly a ch-” he started, but was interrupted by your loud, obnoxious gagging noises.

“He wasn’t like that! Totally...I mean, he was a little nicer I suppose, and he didn’t have a tail or anything, but-” he started, but the ending was lost under your gagging noises. 

“I will go out with Karkat whatever-his-last-name-is when HELL freezes over, my darling,” you said seriously. 

“I’m ju-”

“Hell. Freezes. Over,” you said, enunciating each word very carefully. He snorted, leaning his forehead against yours. 

“Whatever you say, you dork,” he said, laughing quietly. You stayed like that for a while, well into the dusk, when a sudden ‘pop’ and ‘bang’ startled you two from your own little world.

 

“What was-” you started, but they came again. Louder this time. John’s eyebrows knitted together. It was coming from the camp, where everyone else was. It sounded like far away fireworks. Then came the smell, a burning, musky sort of smell. That was definitely the smell of gunfire. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao cliffhanger I'll see you all in fic hell
> 
> By the way I have a tumblr   
> (therewerenorelevanturlsavailable)


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